Frequently Asked Questions

Questions:

A Member or LRS client said they are not receiving their email.
Why was my email not delivered?

Error 550

Among all SMTP reply messages, error 550 is surely the most common. It generally comes with a side-message like "550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable" or "550 5 2 1 mail from refused spam site".

Simply put, a 550 error code means that your SMTP server isn't able to deliver the sent email to the user because the mailbox does not exist: either the customer has entered it wrong (a typical example is something like mail@otmail.com instead of mail@hotmail.com), or the account has been deactivated and replaced with a new one (but you didn't know it).

In any case, you must remove this address from your mailing list: keeping sending messages to it will just cause other 550 messages. This is not simply annoying; it is dangerous as well for your deliverability. In fact, it implicitly suggests to ISPs and receiving systems that you don't really care about your list hygiene - just like spammers: so with time you could be penalized and see your delivery rate decrease.

Of course the best practice here is not simply to erase the address that provokes a 550 error code, but to
replace it with a new one whenever possible. How to do that? If you have another way to contact your user - a phone number, Twitter, Skype... - just send him a line to apprise him that his current email account is wrong, and to ask him a functioning one.


Samples of 550 message content from different receiving email servers:

• Address Rejected
• Recipient Rejected
• Message rejected as spam by Content Filtering
• The email account that you tried to reach does not exist
• No such user
• User unknown
• Recipient not found
• Invalid Recipient
• Recipient address rejected
• Not our customer

Error 551

A 551 email error is normally encountered when there is an attempted delivery to a mail server that doesn't handle mail for the specified recipient.

Error 552

A 552 email error is typically encountered when there is a problem related to an attachment in your email. Either it has exceeded the size limits of the remote server, or the file-type isn't allowed by the remote server. Some mail servers also seem to use this error code incorrectly when blocking a message due to triggering a filter such as a URL in the message being found in a domain black list.

* IntelLinx does not support attachments in the eBroadcast Module.
* It is always better to link to a file on your website

Error 553

A 553 email error is normally related to SMTP authentication not being used. Most mail servers require that you authenticate with a valid user on that system, before you're allowed to relay a remote message out.

However some mail administrators will also use the 553 error if a user doesn't exist or for various other reasons as well. You should receive a bounce-back message from the server with a variation of email error 553 in the subject, and the body should contain your original message that you attempted to deliver.

Error 554

This user doesn't have an valid email account. Usually caused by a bad email address at a valid Domain (example : user abc123@gmail.com).
gmail.com is a valid Domain but user abc123 does not exist there.

Host or Domain Name Cannot Be Found

The primary reason for this error message is the e-mail address you are sending to is not in the correct format (e.g. without the @, with no domain or incorrect domain name specified, etc.).

Check the email addresses in your "To:" field and try to send the message again.