Email issues after account transfer

[adeyjones]

Hi, I launched a new AWS EC2 instance with WHM/cPanel image and transferred one of my sites on to it. Since that, any outgoing mail is going to junk/spam, and my website wont even send mail from the contact form via SMTP as it says it cannot connect.

I have sent a test email to another account which went to spam, and looking at the headers it says "Relay HELO'd using suspicious hostname". Looked in Email Deliverability, and the Reverse DNS Value is "ec2-63-34-226-96.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com." but should this not be the server host name? If so, how can I change it as that field is not editable?

I have an SPF record of: "v=spf1 ip4:63.34.226.96 ~all" which I think is correct, and DKIM record is also in.

Thanks.

 

[ffeingol]

Based on a quick search you may or may not be able to set the AWS reverse IP yourself. This was one doc on how to do it. If it's not there for you, I'd suggest contacting Amazon support. Having default RDNS like that "can" affect email deliverability,

 

[adeyjones]

Thank you, I have put a reverse DNS on 2 of my elastic IP's which are currently pending, and once in a 'ready' state i'll try my email again and see what happens.

Coincidentally, I have installed a SMTP plugin on one of my sites and that is also unable to connect to the SMTP host, have confirmed that the usual ports are not being blocked in CSF and are also open in my AWS security group.

 

[adeyjones]

Coincidentally, I have installed a SMTP plugin on one of my sites and that is also unable to connect to the SMTP host, have confirmed that the usual ports are not being blocked in CSF and are also open in my AWS security group.

Ignore this, just tried switching it from SSL to TLS and that sent fine, may have been something to do with port 465 as TLS (587) is fine too.

 

[adeyjones]

In Email Deliverability I now have the following message:

The system sends “primary.surgeryweb.org.uk”’s outgoing email from the “63.34.226.96” IP address. The only PTR value for this IP address must be “ec2-63-34-226-96.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com”. This is the name that this server sends with SMTP’s “HELO” command to send “primary.surgeryweb.org.uk”’s outgoing email.

1 unexpected PTR value exists for this IP address:

• primary.surgeryweb.org.uk

To fix this problem, replace all PTR records for “96.226.34.63.in-addr.arpa” with the following record at “ns1-24-eu-west-1.ec2-rdns.amazonaws.com”, “ns2-24-eu-west-1.ec2-rdns.amazonaws.com”, “ns3-24-eu-west-1.ec2-rdns.amazonaws.com”, and “ns4-24-eu-west-1.ec2-rdns.amazonaws.com”:

The PTR value primary.surgeryweb.org.uk is what I put as reverse DNS in my AWS console for my elastic IP - should I have put ec2-63-34-226-96.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com?

 

[ffeingol]

I would say (in your case) that your RDNS/PTR is fine and cPanel is suggesting a bad name. The RDNS is normally set to the FQDN of the host.