Wealthy Affiliate Email Hosting Server is Functioning Again - A Bad Experience
Perhaps not many members are aware that our email server was down from 18 Oct to 2 Nov (16 days). Or perhaps I didn't follow enough members to know the shared "pain", since we are all on shared hosting.
Webmail works intermittently where you can still send emails out, sometimes. But for those using email clients like MS Outlook or Thunderbird, any email that you send using your domain email will just not get delivered to the recipient.
I used my domain email account quite frequently and it had been a really challenging time for me.
This is by far my worst experience here at Wealthy Affiliate. Never thought that an email hosting service could be down for so long.
I'm glad that the email service is now available again and my domain emails can be sent via Outlook successfully. Hope it stays that way. Need to monitor.
I am not so happy, however, with the transparency and promptness of our Site Support. While I understand the issue had to be escalated to the senior server admins, the lack of proactiveness and information updates was deafening.
I had to chase Site Support for updates every so often so that I could understand what happened and appreciate why the issue could not be resolved soon enough.
It took me a long time to squeeze out some understanding that it was due to a huge amount of spam sent from WA hosting servers that caused a reputation hit on the mail relays thus affecting outgoing emails.
And every time I tried to follow up for updates, it was very often a standard response of:
"We just wanted to give you an update on this SiteSupport ticket to let you know we are looking into this for you right now. We will respond with more info very soon."
I can take this if the issue could be solved in 1 or 2 days, but 16 days... I think it is only fair for me as a client of WA to know more about what is happening and how is the progress of getting things fixed.
I was also advised to try subscribing to Google Workspace to have better email deliverability. I didn't think that made sense when I had to pay more for a failure here.
I broke my personal record. It took me 85 back-and-forth replies to finally see that the issue is resolved.
And I actually found out the issue have been resolved when I was testing Outlook to try and see if it works. I thought Site Support might update me soon to confirm this and ask me to test it out. 2 days passed, no news. I had to probe Site Support to check and confirm with the senior server admin if the issue was indeed fixed.
No transparency on the issue, a lack of proactiveness, and a lack of clarity. I thought this was pretty bad.
I can only reckon that there are bigger issues that were happening that choked up Site Support's bandwidth to provide better support on this issue.
Anyway, most of these have already been conveyed to Kyle. Hope to see improvements on the service level going forward.
While this post all seems to paint a bad light on our Site Support, I am still grateful for the hard work of the people behind this inbox and for getting the issue fixed.
I'm writing here to vent my frustration, no doubt. But as a community, we should all grow together and I appreciate the openness here to allow us to share our experiences.
I hope things can improve here.
Recent Comments
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So sorry you have had trouble with your business email service. Hope you get it all worked out.
I must say, though, that I have had great support with Site Support, as they have always answered my questions promptly and have solved many problems for me. I guess it boils down to what I've asked. Hope my good luck continues to hold.
Hi Fran, yes, Site Support is great. Just that this issue was considered more major and there is a level of communication gap that I had convey to Kyle and Carson and hope they can help to improve.
Good info here! I have been planning on setting up my WA emails in Outlook so I didn't need to check each domain's emails, but not gonna do that now!
I'll check Google Workspace instead :)
Teri
I'm glad that this info was timely for you Teri - Google Workspace is going to give you a far better experience than Outlook ever could.
I'm kind of confused. Does this mean using a Gmail account for my business email instead of the domain-level email?
I thought it was best for email deliverability to use domain-level emails, which I have set in my new Aweber setups.
Thanks,
Teri
Hi Teri,
We must use our domain-level email address in our Aweber setup. We cannot use our Gmail email address.
Thanks for sharing your issues in a respectful way. As businesses grow, weak spots will show up. It is important to get the problem solved, and hopefully, that is being attended to. We will all be better off hanging in and allowing the back-and-forth of communication to fix what needs to be fixed.
We have too many pluses to allow the community to disappear. I agree that this issue took a long time to resolve, but with your continued attention, the solution should be completed. Thanks for standing up for the services we understood we were paying for.
Sami
Yes indeed, we need to feedback on the service standard and help WA to improve.
The Site Support ticketing method is not really efficient. Takes a longer time to fix things.
If only there could be a live chat with Site Support available, I think solving issues would be much faster.
I only found out today... The site support seems to be working on it, however it has been for 12 hours now...
My emails are not being sent out yet.
Hi Michal,
I had thought the issue should resolved by now...
Whenever you can, drop a follow up note in your site support ticket to ask for a status... but good luck.
Now I start to worry if my email will be down again.
Have a read of my comment above and that may answer your question why your email is not being accepted. ALL email at WA is sending, whether it's accepted will depend on how you've got your domain email setup.
All explained above!
Well, I have been using ONLY Webmail at Wealthy Affiliate for a couple of years now.
And still my emails are not going out.
Support says they looking at it...
Could it be that I have the wrong settings? :
Outgoing Mail Settings
hostname:smtp.siterubix.com port: 25
See more comments
Hi Richard,
Thanks for sharing your experience and your constructive feedback. We understand how important it is to have a reliable email service is for your business, and we are aware that some folks faced challenges with email during this period. We apologize for that.
To clarify though, the primary issues with sending emails from clients like Outlook stem from modern email security protocols. Most major providers, such as Gmail and Hotmail, require DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) signing and SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records to verify email authenticity and prevent spam. Unfortunately, it’s technically not possible to apply DKIM signatures to emails sent through our SMTP server from external clients like Outlook, which is why some emails were not delivered reliably.
DKIM signing is not best practice when sending emails through Outlook or other external clients via an SMTP server that doesn’t apply the DKIM signature itself.
DKIM works by adding a digital signature to an email at the moment it’s sent, which authenticates the email’s origin. This signature is generated by the sending mail server rather than the email client (like Outlook). When you send an email through Outlook via an SMTP server that doesn’t handle DKIM, the email leaves the client without a DKIM signature, so it won’t pass the DKIM verification checks required by many major email providers. So, unless you setup DKIM yourself using Outlook, your email would be sent, but not accepted at most services. Hotmail has required DKIM for a long time, Gmail was accepting with just SPF, but now it is rejecting all mail without DKIM signatures.
To ensure DKIM signing, emails need to be sent directly through the Wealthy Affiliate webmail interface or through an email server specifically configured to add the DKIM signature, such as what services like Google Workspace provide.
Webmail at Wealthy Affiliate has continued to work because it’s configured to meet these security requirements, including DKIM signing.
However, for users who prefer external clients like you are Richard, we’ve made recent updates to support DKIM signing so that mail will get through.
Please note, though, that this is a shared system, and the reputation of our email relays can be affected by spam activity, which we work diligently to monitor and control. To protect this reputation, we’ve tightened limitations on sending volumes and enhanced spam filtering to maintain a more stable email environment. Mail Relays that are using SMTP are now segmented from our main mail-relays for those using webmail. We warn that although mail is being successfully accepted by the main mail services, this is again, not best practice to DKIM sign this.
For those using 3rd party sending clients like Outlook, you should look for a more robust solution, or transition over to WA Webmail. Third-party services like Google Workspace offer enhanced email security and reliability for custom domains. We’d be happy to assist you in configuring Gmail with your domain emails if you’re interested and many folks at WA are already using Google Workspace to manage all of their domain emails from a single interface.
I realize the above info is really quite technical, but I wanted to give all folks here at WA an explanation so that they realize that EMAIL has always been sending. For some methods, it was being rejected as security at Gmail / Hotmail etc have really increased, but our mail service has always sent the mail. Rejections will be far fewer for those folks in the same situation as Richard using SMTP and a 3rd party client.
My suggestions:
1 - Webmail is limited on any web host, I suggest if you're using domain email regularly, to consider a service like Google Workspace. It will allow you to use GMAIL for sending your domain email and you can manage all of your domain email in one place. The cost is negligible. Webmail is for those sending very few email, it's a service that lacks many of the features you would expect from Gmail or Hotmail, so why not just use Google Workspace and use Gmail with your domain email? That's certainly an option for you here at WA and we can set this up for you if you contact us at SiteSupport.
2 - For any using an email FORWARD - email forwards are a thing of the past. Although our platform still supports it, email will never get accepted if you're using an email forward as there are no SPF records or DKIM signatures. This is an old method that is completely unsupported and unaccepted in today's email sending world.
3 - For those using clients like Outlook and SMTP, know that you're on a shared service and that the sending reputation of the email servers we assign to this kind of email sending are susceptible to spam. We've added DKIM to this solution, but this too is something that may not be sustainable. Signing email that does not originate on our servers is not best practice. Move over to a service like Google Workspace if you do not want to use Webmail.
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So, there you have it a bit of a technical explanation and some suggestions.
Happy to discuss in the comments below. As always, we're working hard for you and we appreciate every one of you greatly.
Cheers,
Carson
Thanks for this detail, Carson!
Teri
Hi Carson,
Thanks for providing this explanation. It could have helped a lot in my experience with Site Support if you were able to guide them on how to respond better.
I have a first question as I read your inputs:
"To protect this reputation, we’ve tightened limitations on sending volumes and enhanced spam filtering to maintain a more stable email environment."
QNS: Is this still 20 mails per hour limit?
A second question on my mind is that I still find it hard to understand why we need to use Google Workspace which is an entire suite of tools. Subscribing to this service just for email becomes an overkill.
A third question that came to my mind when reading the inputs:
"3 - For those using clients like Outlook and SMTP, know that you're on a shared service and that the sending reputation of the email servers we assign to this kind of email sending is susceptible to spam. We've added DKIM to this solution, but this too is something that may not be sustainable. Signing emails that do not originate on our servers is not the best practice. Move over to a service like Google Workspace if you do not want to use Webmail."
QNS: Isn't it that all web hosting companies support Outlook or other email clients, as it is quite common that few people use the webmail from any hosting company? So how is WA hosting any different from others in that it may not be sustainable? It seems like you are saying other web hosting companies will have similar issues and perhaps also implement limitations on the sending volumes.
Hi Carson,
To add on btw, sending emails via WA Webmail really didn't work when I tried testing using WA Webmail to send domain emails to my gmail account. The emails didn't get delivered. Maybe the senior server admin was fixing something at that time though.
Hi Richard,
Happy to answer answer these for you.
Re: SiteSupport - our solution was not able to be explained until it was in place. There would have been no benefit to explain what we were ATTEMPTING to do until it was tested and implemented. So, in the defence of our SiteSupport team which in many cases is myself or the senior engineers who've built our entire hosting platform - when changes happen in the industry and we are updating our infrastructure due to those changes, we simply don't have an answer other than "we're working on it".
The SMTP sending limit is 10/hour
Re: Google Workspace - if you want to use Gmail, that is what you need to use. Workspace setup wizard will guide you through setting up DKIM signing and SPF records for your domain. They provide you with those details and we implement them on your domain for you. You do not need to use this, but I can assure you that SMTP sending via 3rd party service is not a long-term solution. For those who want the best email service in the world, you use Google Workspace. You can use any email service you like though, but the KEY point is that it uses their own servers for sending mail so that DKIM signatures are in place.
And yes, as we do, we support SMTP. We're putting "Trust" in users using SMTP by signing the mail that we relay, and limiting to 10/hour should hopefully deter spam and bulk sending. However you're on a shared server and all users have access to SMTP credentials.
We can look into that for you and see why the mail was rejected. Send us a SiteSupport ticket and let us know the domain email address so we can check the sending logs.
Hi Carson,
Thank you for the explanation.
Re: SiteSupport:
Ok, understand the challenges you are facing. Perhaps you can guide SiteSupport to try and provide a status update on the ticket that you guys are still working on it even though there was no solution. There were a few instances where I waited 24 hours and there was no news on what was happening after saying "we're working on it".
Just my suggestion for improving communication flow.
Re: SMTP Sending Limit:
Noted on the reduction from 20 to 10. So are we saying that bulk sending between 10 to 20 emails was ok for a while but that was then seen as spam by Gmail/Hotmail and hence the team decided to further reduce the limit to 10 mail/hour?
Re: SMTP credentials:
What is the implication when you mention "all users have access to SMTP credentials"? I think it seems to suggest a security risk but can you explain in more context for better understanding?
Re: Google Workspace:
I think I'm starting to see more clearly what you mean. My understanding now is that when we setup domain email in Outlook, emails sent out of it do not carry DKIM signatures. But the email will still need to pass through WA email hosting which is where it then adds the DKIM signatures before relaying the email to the recipient.
Hi Carson,
It is 13 Nov here.
The email service has been working fine since last week till yesterday. It is now down again.
Emails sent from both Webmail and Outlook cannot reach the recipient.
Can you please help to check urgently?