Customers Not Getting Email Order Confirmations

[elysian]

Hello,

I'm sure I've seen this discussed somewhere before, but I can't find it now, so apologies for asking again:

I'm repeatedly getting emails from customers asking if we've received their order, because they're not getting email confirmations. Every time I place a test order, I get an email confirmation perfectly OK, and as far as I'm aware, nothing has changed in our setup for ages - these emails have only been coming in for the last 10 days or so. I'm using version 6.1.4 and am not the most technically aware of people... ..so I would really appreciate some simple step by step advice as to how to fix this problem. Thank you!

[Mike Hughes]

Things you need to check to help diagnose the problem.

1. It sounds like only external addresses are failing to get the email so place a test order from an external address. Something like a Yahoo address would be a good choice.

Did the order email arrive?

2. If it didn't arrive, check in the spam/bulk folder. Did the email arrive there?

3. It may be that you now require SMTP authorisation to send emails to an external email address. Check with your web host to see if this is the case and whether there's a workaround (always wirth trying 'localhost' as the name of the smtp server).

There are some actinic workarounds, but they involve modifying the scripts in V6 or going to V7.

See if this helps. If not, post back for more help.

Mike

[elysian]

Thanks, Mike.

It does seem to be to do with SMTP authorisation then, from what I've read on my host's support pages. I didn't receive a confirmation (not even in the junk folder) when I used an external address for the test order. I tried changing the SMTP setting to localhost and that didn't work at all - didn't even get a 'catalog order received' email then, let alone a confirmation. Also tried changing it to smtp.elysian.co.uk (elysian being our domain) as suggested on the host pages, but that hasn't worked either.

Thank you for your suggestions, I've contacted host to ask for advice.

[elysian]

OK, Verio got back to me with this reply:

"To relay messages (send to an external address) you need to have authorization to do so. This means you need to log in with an account. If there is a way to make the actinic software use an email account, that would be the best way to resovle this problem."

I'm afraid I don't really know what they're saying - sorry. All email messages to something@elysian.co.uk are forwarded to our own btinternet.com address (bt internet broadband being our ISP). We don't have a problem sending ordinary email from outlook express, so is he saying that we need to configure actinic to send via outlook express? If so, I would really appreciate any help with that. Thank you.

[Mike Hughes]

I think what he's saying is that actinic has to connect to the mail (smtp) server using a username and password just as Outlook does. This is another way of saying you need to have an smtp authorisation to connect to the smtp server which is only available in V7.

There is a workaround, but it involved modifying the scripts and relies on certain services being available. I'd probably suggest you buy a years worth of actinic cover and upgrade to V7.

Someone else may know a workaround for verio though.

Mike

OK. There's a whole thread on verio smtp with ideas for you to try:

See: http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=14144

[elysian]

OK; we will be getting the V7 upgrade - thanks very much for the verio thread...think I might be needing that as it sounds as if we may have problems even once we've upgraded!