No bounce back, no status notification, no track delivery on shared server

[ehardin]

I have exhausted all possibility of GoDaddy Help so I am hoping I can find the answers here. I have a GoDaddy cPanel account on a shared server. GoDaddy has verified that all of my DNS records look good and that none of my Spam Filters or Email Filters are problematical.

My problem is that I never get a bounce back from obviously bad email like To: [email protected] and, when the Status Notification is set on I get no notifications on any email. I have also tried to use the Track Delivery in the cPanel UI and all it ever says is The search matches 0 records.

I have customers who claim that they never received an email that was sent to them. When I send it via a gmail account, they get it. I have no idea of which others customers are not getting email since I have no bounce back and no status notifications.

This is a shared server so I have no root access. Is there anything I can do or check for?

TIA
Ed

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! Inside the cPanel >> Track Delivery interface, do you see any details in the "Delivery Report" section at all, or is that area just blank? If that is blank, that would indicate to me that the logs have been restricted in some way on the machine.

Unfortunately, the only person who would know, would be the root user of the machine. It should be easy for them to run the following command:

grep "[email protected]" /var/log/exim_mainlog

to find the transaction in the logs as that only takes a few seconds, but there isn't a way for you to do that with only cPanel access.

 

[ehardin]

If I leave Recipient Email blank and select Show All and click on Run Report, everything is blank except for a light gray " No records found. " If I do the same thing but fill in a Recipient Address for an email that I just sent everything is blank but below where the report is supposed to be is something like
Send via SMTP
MX: p3nlsmtpcp-v01.prod.phx3.gdg (132.148.52.4)

But what about the everyday default bounce back and status report? Shouldn't that still work? Would I be able to solve this problem is I moved to a Virtual Server or a Dedicated Server account?

 

[idpablo]

I have exhausted all possibility of GoDaddy Help so I am hoping I can find the answers here. I have a GoDaddy cPanel account on a shared server. GoDaddy has verified that all of my DNS records look good and that none of my Spam Filters or Email Filters are problematical.

My problem is that I never get a bounce back from obviously bad email like To: [email protected] https://machance-casino-en-ligne.com/ and, when the Status Notification is set on I get no notifications on any email. I have also tried to use the Track Delivery in the cPanel UI and all it ever says is The search matches 0 records.

I have customers who claim that they never received an email that was sent to them. When I send it via a gmail account, they get it. I have no idea of which others customers are not getting email since I have no bounce back and no status notifications.

This is a shared server so I have no root access. Is there anything I can do or check for?

TIA
Ed

It is also possible that the problem could be because your IP address has been blacklisted by some email providers.
Moving to a virtual server or a dedicated server can help solve this problem if the problem is due to restrictions on a shared server. This is just a version

 

[cPRex]

No matter what the issue is, I would still expect the bouncebacks to work normally. If your host isn't helpful, the only real option is to get a new host or move up to a dedicated machine where you have total control over the server, but that does also come with a learning curve as well.

 

[ehardin]

Thanks. I'll keep digging into this. It would be a pain to switch hosts so I am reluctant to do that yet. Thanks again.

 

[sparek-3]

How are you sending the messages to begin with?

Keep in mind there is an envelope-from and a header from - these two addresses don't have to match. An MTA (Exim or whatever Gmail's mail server is using) will only read the envelope-sender, that is where the bounce message will go back to.

If you're sending this message through PHP's mail function, for example:

mail("[email protected]", "subject", "message", "From: [email protected]\r\n");

Then don't expect to get a bounce back message at [email protected] - more than likely the bounce message will go into the mailbox at /home/cpaneluser/mail. If you log into webmail with your cPanel username and password, you should see the bounce message.

To define where the bounce message goes back to, you have to define an explicit envelope sender in your mail() code:

mail("[email protected]", "subject", "message", "From: [email protected]\r\n", "[email protected]");

Now Exim will structure the message as using an envelope-sender of [email protected] and the bounce message will be sent to [email protected].

 

[ehardin]

How are you sending the messages to begin with?

Keep in mind there is an envelope-from and a header from - these two addresses don't have to match. An MTA (Exim or whatever Gmail's mail server is using) will only read the envelope-sender, that is where the bounce message will go back to.

If you're sending this message through PHP's mail function, for example:

mail("[email protected]", "subject", "message", "From: [email protected]\r\n");

Then don't expect to get a bounce back message at [email protected] - more than likely the bounce message will go into the mailbox at /home/cpaneluser/mail. If you log into webmail with your cPanel username and password, you should see the bounce message.

To define where the bounce message goes back to, you have to define an explicit envelope sender in your mail() code:

mail("[email protected]", "subject", "message", "From: [email protected]\r\n", "[email protected]");

Now Exim will structure the message as using an envelope-sender of [email protected] and the bounce message will be sent to [email protected].

I am on a shared cPanel server so I do not have root access. I have sent email out either via my desktop email client or via the online Round cube webmail. In neither case do I get status notification when I set that on, or bounceback when I send to an obviously bad email address such as [email protected]. Track Delivery also does not work.

 

[ehardin]

No matter what the issue is, I would still expect the bouncebacks to work normally. If your host isn't helpful, the only real option is to get a new host or move up to a dedicated machine where you have total control over the server, but that does also come with a learning curve as well.

I am still getting nowhere with GoDaddy. Can I assume that with GoDaddy cPanel shared server getting bounce back and status notification normally work. And that Track Delivery normally work? Can I assume that it is only my IP that is having the problem?

 

[cPRex]

Yes, I would expect those tools to work on any normal server, no matter where it is hosted.

 

[ehardin]

For what it is worth for anyone who comes upon this thread. GoDaddy admins can read the log files of my failed emails and my delivered emails but they insist that cPanel is too basic to pass this on to me. When I tell them that cPanel says that even on a shared server these features (bounce back and status notification) should be operable, they said maybe I should buy Office 365 email. When I said that I do not want Office 365 email they said maybe I should get my own dedicated server.

As far as this cPanel forum is concerned, is there another hosting company that offers cPanel shared server for which bounce back and status notification do work?

Ed

 

[cPRex]

That whole thing just seems odd to me. I can't personally recommend a hosting provider, but you can find a list of cPanel Partners here: https://partnernoc.cpanel.net/

 

[ehardin]

I read a good review of HostGator so I might try them. Just to make sure I have emailed HostGator to double check that their shared server hosting email will have bounce back and status notification. If they say yes, I will probably test with one of my unused domains before commiting to a complete transfer of my active domains. I can come to no other conclusion other than GoDaddy is crippling cPanel in order to help sell the pricey Office 365 email accounts. Jeeeeze....what a mess.

 

[sparek-3]

I just find it strange that GoDaddy would intentionally cripple this specific "item". There's not really anything to gain from doing so.

You say you are using Webmail to send these messages? What Webmail suite are you using? Roundcube?

Are you logging into webmail by going to http://yourdomain.com/webmail and then logging in with the email address and it's corresponding password? Or are you logging in with your cPanel username and password?

If you send a message to a legitimate email address that you own from this webmail, do you receive it?

When you receive it at the legitimate email address, view the message headers. Look for a Return-Path header, it should be near the top. What email address is listed there? How does that email address compare to the email address of the webmail account you logged into?

Do you have SpamAssassin enabled on your cPanel account? Do you have the Spam Box enabled on your cPanel account? Do you have Spam filters set up to automatically delete spam messages?

As far as "status notification" I'm not exactly sure what that's referring to, is that read receipt? I wouldn't put any stock at all in read receipts. Read receipts are suppose to notify you when the recipient opens the message to read it. But that depends on the recipient's email client (whether that's an application or webmail) to actually respond to that read receipt. And in my experience few do. On top of all of that, I don't think there's much to gain from read receipts other than to further clog up the mailing systems.

Not getting NDRs (Non-Delivery Reports) when you attempt to send a message to an email address that does not exist or does not accept messages, that would be the main focus of trying to resolve.

 

[ehardin]

1) I have tested both with the RoundCube via cPanel Admin Email and also via my Thunderbird email client.

2) I have been logging directly into my cPanel Admin via https://p3plzcpnl499948.prod.phx3.secureserver.net:2083/ and my username and password. But I have also used my domain.com:2083/ and, as I mentioned, my desktop client.

3) If I send from one of my email addresses on this shared server to another address on this server, I do receive it. Also, most of my clients receive my emails (but not all) and that is the problem I want to track down but, without bounce back, status notification, or the use of Track Delivery, I have no idea what is happening.

4) When I receive an email from one of my other legitimate email addresses the Return-Path and return path envelope both reflect the correct sending email address

5) I have SpamAssassin running. I have a Global Filter to delete anything with a SpamScore > 120. On the individual email accounts I have an Email Filter to move anything with a SpamScore > 60 (or in 1 case > 90) to the Spam Folder. I'm not familiar with Spam Box so I assume that I do not have it turned on.

6) The status notification is not the same as Return Receipt Requested. Status Notification is an option, when sending email either with RoundCube or with Thunderbird, which asks for a reply from the receiving server that, I believe, is supposed to give the the tracking path of the email and the fact that it was received by the server.

7) Yes, the bounce back was the first thing I realized was missing when I had customers say they never received my email. I could send them the same email from a gmail account and they would get it but not from my cPanel account. The email would go out and that would be the last I would know about it. That was when I started trying to use status notification and the Track Delivery function in the cPanel Admin dashboard only to discover that they did not work either.