Getting constantly blocked by hotmail, and the stupid new mail server suggestions

[Neil]

Anyone with Zoho?, as Hotmail have actually started returning some of my emails with my domain with them this morning. I’m actually starting to think hotmail have problems.

[LabelKing]

well i was just about to sign up with zoho tonight after trying and failing with microsoft over the weekend... but now...?

[bornfree]

We've used Google Workspace (business GMail) for a few years while we've had our BP site. Prompted by the server move, we switched from using the BP system to send transactional emails and email newsletters. For transactional emails we entered GMail settings into the Custom SMTP part of the BP system for outgoing email. For email newsletters we signed up with Mailerlite, so bypass the BP system altogether for email newsletters. All going well. Did some searching to get the correct GMail settings for the Custom SMTP and was able to do it fairly easily with a bit of help from BP support. Only difficult part was the need to generate an App Password from within our Google account and use this instead of our normal GMail password. There's a small monthly fee for both Google Workspace and Mailerlite. Hope that helps.

[LabelKing]

We've used Google Workspace (business GMail) for a few years while we've had our BP site. Prompted by the server move, we switched from using the BP system to send transactional emails and email newsletters. For transactional emails we entered GMail settings into the Custom SMTP part of the BP system for outgoing email. For email newsletters we signed up with Mailerlite, so bypass the BP system altogether for email newsletters. All going well. Did some searching to get the correct GMail settings for the Custom SMTP and was able to do it fairly easily with a bit of help from BP support. Only difficult part was the need to generate an App Password from within our Google account and use this instead of our normal GMail password. There's a small monthly fee for both Google Workspace and Mailerlite. Hope that helps.

does that let you use your own domain for sending and receiving?

[bornfree]

Yes, own domain used as normal - no change there.

[LabelKing]

Anyone with Zoho?, as Hotmail have actually started returning some of my emails with my domain with them this morning. I’m actually starting to think hotmail have problems.

Are you still getting this issue? is it all hotmail or just some?

[tomtomg]

We've been having issues with all transaction emails being bounced from Hotmail/Outlook/Live addresses for a while. When raised with BP the response was that Hotmail have blacklisted BPs servers. The suggested fix was to shift all email hosting to our separate hosted server we use for business emails, which then led to bigger issues as conflicts arose with the SPF records.

All we want is our customers to receive their order confirmations. It shouldn't be this difficult.

[LabelKing]

All we want is our customers to receive their order confirmations. It shouldn't be this difficult.

Exactly. Like we don't have other stuff to be doing than faffing about trying to get basic functionality to work.

[EdHarrison]

Custom smpt is the simplest.
workspace isn't expensive.

Bluepark will assist with the integration which is simple.

We used a company to setup our workspace but watching them it was unnecessary, I could have done it and I'm pretty useless with IT.

This is a problem with all email unless you use 365 or Google 'blessed' servers.

[Neil]

Are you still getting this issue? is it all hotmail or just some?

All ok again now.

i did read earlier that some bigger companies were struggling with email deliverability ‘to certain email addresses’

It did make me wonder to who.

[LabelKing]

All ok again now.

i did read earlier that some bigger companies were struggling with email deliverability ‘to certain email addresses’

It did make me wonder to who.

great, I'll go ahead and give them a try - they have a free trial so that will allow me to test it.

[LabelKing]

ok, so yesterday I switched one of our (slower) websites over to zoho as a test, and wouldn't you know it there were no hotmail orders all day...

But this morning we've had an order from an @hotmail and another from @live - and both have come back with an email from zoho saying

This message was created automatically by mail delivery system.

THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.

The original message was received at Sun, 08 Mar 2026 11:41:34 +0100 from [me]

----- The following addresses had fatal errors -----
[[customer]@hotmail.co.uk]

Message will be retried for 4 more day(s)

The more detailed information in the attachment said "Diagnostic-Code: 4.7.650 The mail server [136.143.169.57] has been temporarily rate limited due to IP reputation."

So great, even zoho is being affected.

Seriously, all we want to do is have our website send confirmation and dispatch emails to our customers - no newsletters or bulk mail - just "we got your order" and "we sent your order". Why is this basic task now such a pain the arse???

[LabelKing]

Just to clarify, apparently when it says "rate limited" what it means is that Microsofts servers are just saying "no" and bouncing the email. It's Zoho's SMTP server that is saying it will retry. ie. it's bounced but zoho will keep resending it until it gets through or it gives up...

[bornfree]

ok, so yesterday I switched one of our (slower) websites over to zoho as a test, and wouldn't you know it there were no hotmail orders all day...

But this morning we've had an order from an @hotmail and another from @live - and both have come back with an email from zoho saying



The more detailed information in the attachment said "Diagnostic-Code: 4.7.650 The mail server [136.143.169.57] has been temporarily rate limited due to IP reputation."

So great, even zoho is being affected.

Seriously, all we want to do is have our website send confirmation and dispatch emails to our customers - no newsletters or bulk mail - just "we got your order" and "we sent your order". Why is this basic task now such a pain the arse???

My experience with those sort of warning messages is that the original email never gets through in the end. I would give Google Workspace a try as per my earlier reply.

[LabelKing]

My experience with those sort of warning messages is that the original email never gets through in the end. I would give Google Workspace a try as per my earlier reply.

Do you know if that works ok with Outlook 365 (local to pc, not the online version)? Originally we tried microsoft as a solution as we figured they'd be least likely to be blocked by their own servers, but ironically microsofts mails servers didn't work with our microsoft outlook mail client... apparently, we can use any pop3 mail service with outlook except microsofts own mail servers as they are exchange based and therefore refuse to operate as pop3 client to pop3 server (even though they operate as a pop3 server for other clients), which means that each different MS email address (one for each of our websites) would have its own unique inbox/sentmail/etc folder structure in our outlook clients. Which would be completely impractical. Where-as any other pop3 server can use our shared .pst file and (extensive) inbox mail structure. This whole thing just gets more ridiculous the more solutions we try... but while I was asking AI about this it did mention that google has its own weird auth thing that may cause issues for some clients.