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Gmail having issues

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Re: Gmail having issues

#411

Post by dkdk8283 »

ascar wrote: post #326
bayindirh wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I said this in another comment but this seems like a naive way to react to an "address does not exist error" that they've already delivered to before. Like HTTP, SMTP is also designed to be stateless so, in the first place, the remote server shouldn't return a permanent error in temporary failure scenarios. The default error should be 450: "Requested action not taken – The user’s mailbox is unavailable”, not "the u…

Your answer kind of misses the point GP was trying to make. Google's mailserver could genuinely believe that the user doesn't exist, if the user service doesn't fail completely but cannot access part of the data and thus doesn't find a user record. In this case the returned "user doesn't exist" error is intended behavior of the mail server and the post you replied to still stands. If you sent to that email successful…

I think it’s spot on. Gmail’s failure mode in this scenario isn’t correct. The rest of the internet is functioning as designed.

Re: Gmail having issues

#412

Post by petercooper »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #217
petercooper wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, most likely! That is a common approach for 'soft bounces' in most list management systems (e.g. MailChimp). The problem here is Gmail has been throwing out "NoSuchUser" errors which are an instant unsub in most systems because Gmail takes repeated delivery to non-existing addresses into account for deliverability purposes. I'm extremely paranoid about email hygiene, tiny bounce rates and high delivery rates, so…

> Gmail takes repeated delivery to non-existing addresses into account for deliverability purposes. I think you mean "reputation purposes"? If so, wow, that sucks. Their opaque rules have conditioned their counterparties to punish Google as hard as possible for a screwup.

I think you mean "reputation purposes"?

That better describes what I was trying to say, yes. Reputation then affecting deliverability.

Over 80% of our subscribers use Gmail so to say I'm paranoid about maintaining a good record with them is an understatement ;-) Gmail is a huge weak link for us.

Re: Gmail having issues

#413

Post by gravitas »

LeonM wrote: post #407
cutler wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with self-hosting is indiscriminate blacklisting by Google and Microsoft. You only need to be on the same network as some spam artist to end up shunned. The tech giants are our new overlords.

No, it is not. It really grinds my gears if people are spreading misinformation about 'being on the same network as a spammer', 'indiscriminate blacklists' and corporate overlords for being the reason on why their email is not being delivered. Spam filters have been content driven for a long time now. IP addresses and domain names are ephemeral and so are 'blacklists'. With the amount of spam being send, we would hav…

My corporate overlord (~10k ppl) has a policy to place all incoming email from domains less than 30 days old into the Junk folder, it's a tier 1 rule which cannot be overridden or circumvented by user rules. No amount of properly configured mail services will matter in this scenario. :-/

Re: Gmail having issues

#414

Post by 8fingerlouie »

gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

> People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that.

As a learning experience, sure, but most people are not prepared for what running a 24/7 mail service requires of them.

First of all, a static, non-residential IP is likely needed. The big players will flat out refuse receiption if your IP is registered as residential, so that rules out hosting it from your home despite having gigabit internet.

You also need SPF, DMARC and DKIM working, or major players will also flat out refuse reception.

On top of that, you need to implement the infrastructure to actually host a server 24/7, including patching and backups, as well as monitoring it for unauthorized access.

Despite all of the above, you may still find yourself on a spam/block list, and removing yourself from these can also turn into a large task.

Part of the irony of Gmail having outages is that Google and other "large players" have fought long and hard for a decade to make it harder to host your own mail server. It has been done in the name of fighting spam, but i doubt any of them minded it making it harder to run your own.

So yeah, build your own mail server as a learning experience. Then move the domain to someone dedicated to running it.

I purchased a lifetime subscription (limited promo offer) with mxroute.com. 10GB mail storage, unlimited domains and accounts (limited by space only), as well as a Nextcloud instance for all your users. Service and uptime has been nothing but exceptional. Customer support is actually reachable. The only downside is that the spam filter (SpamAssassin IIRC) is not as highly trained as the GMail one, so more spam comes through.

Re: Gmail having issues

#415

Post by morganvachon »

martin_a wrote: post #383
gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

10 GB space, 1 tld domain of your choice, 99,9% uptime for 1.85€/month with a setup fee of 10€. Hetzner will take care of everything else for you as it's managed webhosting. https://www.hetzner.com/de/webhosting Just because you can (theoretically) run your own infrastructure does not mean you should. Trust the professionals. You don't do your own surgeries, do you? (not affiliated to Hetzner, just was the first offe…

I've used Fastmail for several years now with no issues apart from a slowdown in the phone app a few months back (website still loaded fine). It's a bit more expensive at $50/year/user (about $4.17/month), but you get 25GB of combined mail and file storage, contact/calendar/note syncing, simple static web hosting that's good in a pinch, a very nice web front end, and superb customer support. Not affiliated with them just a happy customer.

It's still putting all your eggs in one basket in a sense, but being a paid service there's a sense of privacy, security, and permanence that Gmail and the other free providers don't offer. I do own my own domain as well, and I have mail accounts tied to it that I use for certain services and communications, mostly medical and local businesses, but I'm still at the mercy of my hosting provider for that domain. With that said, my provider (Tiger Technologies) has been astoundingly awesome and has never let me down in 12+ years of service.

Re: Gmail having issues

#416

Post by davewritescode »

dataflow wrote: post #237
octoberfranklin wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the Nightmare Scenario for mailing lists. Many of them auto-unsubscribe after a bounce.

I said this in another comment but this seems like a naive way to react to an "address does not exist error" that they've already delivered to before. The only legit scenario in which that happens is when the user deletes the address, which is a rare event (pretty much always The underlying issue (wherever this occurs) seems to be lack of nuance regarding error codes when people try to implement robust systems. Diffe…

I 100% assure you that everyone handling gmail errors and getting burned isn’t just tossing failures into a single bucket. There’s a zillion reasons mail can bounce and all of them are taken into account. This is a particular bounce code that signifies that an ESP shouldn’t send email again to this address.

Email service providers are HIGHLY incentivized to act 100% in accordance with the wishes of the system where the mailbox exists because it’s highly likely that acting in any way that’s considered abusive could get your emails landing in a spam folder.

Mail boxes cease to exist thousands of times a day at places I’ve worked previously. Employees leave all the time and people shutdown mailboxes, this is Google’s fuckup, nobody else’s.

Re: Gmail having issues

#417

Post by cascom »

vxNsr wrote: post #302
jonathanbull wrote: post #153

CEO of an email marketing platform here (EmailOctopus). If anyone's curious, here's a chart showing our bounce rate to Gmail addresses over the course of the week: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpUE20UXYAEa_Uv?format=jpg&name=... That's a peak of 90% of Gmail inboxes bouncing – and this has been going on for almost 24 hours.

I know this is your livelihood, but as someone who basically never wants marketing emails, all I can think is "nice" hopefully I get auto-unsub'ed from a ton of lists.

Totally agree, especially as I signed up for exactly zero of them.

Rant: As I side note I usually try and buy direct when shopping online rather than through Amazon (for all but the most trivial purchases) and this is the 2nd largest drawback (behind filling in CC and shipping info) - because I bought one item from you, once in my life does not mean send me a daily email, and then when unsubscribing pretend like I signed up for them! For me it’s one of the easiest ways to destroy brand loyalty/reputation.

Re: Gmail having issues

#418

Post by dmm »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #414
gpmcadam wrote: post #353

People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. But the next best thing you can do is simply just use your own domain. That way, you can at least decide to migrate your email elsewhere. Don't use the free domains you get from things like gmail or other providers, because then you have to _change_ your email address, and not just your MX records.

> People will suggest running your own mail server, and if you have the time and energy then definitely do that. As a learning experience, sure, but most people are not prepared for what running a 24/7 mail service requires of them. First of all, a static, non-residential IP is likely needed. The big players will flat out refuse receiption if your IP is registered as residential, so that rules out hosting it from you…

> First of all, a static, non-residential IP is likely needed.

If you want to directly send mail that's true. But if you send mail through a smarthost, like your isp's smtp server, you can easily receive mail on a dynamic, residential ip.

> implement the infrastructure to actually host a server 24/7,

email is really tolerant of downtime. You can be down for hours without losing mail. The sending servers will retry for a while.

Re: Gmail having issues

#419

Post by judofyr »

mehrdadn wrote: post #399
probst wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is actually a very good reason to drop these email addresses, and the reason is that a high-rate of non-deliverable emails hurt your sender score. It's a total pain to get emails delivered to the major email providers in the first place, and you immediately land in spam (or with emails not delivered at all) if they don't trust the sending email server or your score is anything but stellar!

I have 2 responses to the sender reputation concern: 1. If the user's mail service penalizes you equally regardless of whether the recipient's addressed existed 1 day vs. never existed, that itself is absolutely inexcusable nonsensical behavior that needs to be fixed. You shouldn't do that, just as you shouldn't shoot the mailman (or even arm yourself...) merely because he knocked a second time. 2. Notwithstanding th…

> The proposal isn't that you should blast 100 emails toward the mailbox every time you get a bounce due to an address not existing. The idea was to just exercise some intelligence in the matter. Like maybe just retry a couple times, spaced out by a day or two.

What you're proposing is to explicitly ignore the specification (which says that you should _not_ retry when you receive a 550) and try to implement a custom smart retry logic that handles temporary error cases, but also does not get you blocked.

> So I don't buy this excuse one bit.

I'm all for building resilient services, but "try to detect when a server incorrectly returns 550" is not something I would prioritize at all. I'll happily manually clean up after this occurrence than to have this complicated retry logic. It's not an "excuse", it's a very sensible trade-off.

Re: Gmail having issues

#420

Post by mehrdadn »

judofyr wrote: post #419
mehrdadn wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 2 responses to the sender reputation concern: 1. If the user's mail service penalizes you equally regardless of whether the recipient's addressed existed 1 day vs. never existed, that itself is absolutely inexcusable nonsensical behavior that needs to be fixed. You shouldn't do that, just as you shouldn't shoot the mailman (or even arm yourself...) merely because he knocked a second time. 2. Notwithstanding th…

> The proposal isn't that you should blast 100 emails toward the mailbox every time you get a bounce due to an address not existing. The idea was to just exercise some intelligence in the matter. Like maybe just retry a couple times, spaced out by a day or two. What you're proposing is to explicitly ignore the specification (which says that you should _not_ retry when you receive a 550) and try to implement a custom…

No, I am quite explicitly not ignoring the spec. It quite deliberately says should not, not must not. If anyone is ignoring the spec here, it's you, not me. Should not is sound advice; it's telling you what you're supposed to do when you don't have a reason to behave differently. You know, like how you "should not" leave the lights on when you leave your room. Or—more pertinently here—how you "should not" assume everyone is a liar. But when you actively see evidence that deviates from the norm, you are given the power—and arguably the responsibility—to exercise your discretion here to adapt to the situation. If the spec wanted blind obedience, it would say "must not" like it did in 60 other places, but it quite obviously and intentionally decided that would be unwise, and this scenario seems like a pretty clear illustration of that.
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