Email forwarding from 123-Reg very slow

[hiriskpaul]

I have a domain registered with 123-reg, from which emails are forwarded to various yahoo addresses, but the forwarding has become very slow, sometimes taking several hours. My 123-Reg domain is up for renewal so I am considering moving it, but am I likely to have the same issue with other providers?

[Infrasonic]

What A/B tests have you run so far?

[supremetwo]

I have a domain registered with 123-reg, from which emails are forwarded to various yahoo addresses, but the forwarding has become very slow, sometimes taking several hours. My 123-Reg domain is up for renewal so I am considering moving it, but am I likely to have the same issue with other providers?

Could be Yahoo - they often have issues via changes to spam filter algorithms.

[hiriskpaul]

When I look at the email headers, there are often lengthy delays between email arrival at the 123-reg mail server and the arrival at the yahoo server.

[hiriskpaul]

I have a domain registered with 123-reg, from which emails are forwarded to various yahoo addresses, but the forwarding has become very slow, sometimes taking several hours. My 123-Reg domain is up for renewal so I am considering moving it, but am I likely to have the same issue with other providers?

Could be Yahoo - they often have issues via changes to spam filter algorithms.

Thanks, is Gmail better in this respect? I could set up a test forward to a Gmail account.

[Infrasonic]

A/B Yahoo first by switching it to pull email via POP3 or IMAP. If it's still slow it's more likely the Yahoo end. If not probably a 123Reg issue.

Repeat with a Gmail account.
Gmail POP3 polling is hourly on the free accounts, IMAP (or Gmailify as they call it) seems much more frequent.

I've been using a few free Gmail accounts for several years now as POP3/IMAP aggregator mirrors for my domain and other webmail addresses and it's been rock solid.

[Sussexlad]

I have a domain registered with 123-reg, from which emails are forwarded to various yahoo addresses, but the forwarding has become very slow, sometimes taking several hours. My 123-Reg domain is up for renewal so I am considering moving it, but am I likely to have the same issue with other providers?

I also have my domain name registered with 123-Reg and have just sent several test emails from Fastmail and Mail.uk to various domain email addresses and all have appeared within seconds. I've also not noticed any delay but I guess normally, I wouldn't realise.

Sussexlad

[hiriskpaul]

I have a domain registered with 123-reg, from which emails are forwarded to various yahoo addresses, but the forwarding has become very slow, sometimes taking several hours. My 123-Reg domain is up for renewal so I am considering moving it, but am I likely to have the same issue with other providers?

Could be Yahoo - they often have issues via changes to spam filter algorithms.

Thanks, is Gmail better in this respect? I could set up a test forward to a Gmail account.

Yahoo appears to be the problem rather than 123reg. I set up a forwarder for a new email address in 123 Reg, sending to a Gmail account. I then blitzed the new email address with a couple of hundred emails and they all arrived in Gmail within a few seconds of sending. Setting up Gmail so I could send front the email address was a bit of a faff, but was doable eventually. So one solution appears to be to use Gmail. Gmail is a bit annoying though as free Gmail accounts are limited to 15Gb compared with 1Tb with Yahoo.

I might try outlook.com next.

[johnhemming]

You can change where the Email is forwarded without changing who holds the domain (moving domains can be a bit of a faff).

[hiriskpaul]

You can change where the Email is forwarded without changing who holds the domain (moving domains can be a bit of a faff).

Yes, that is what we will do, at least for the emails that are more time critical. 123reg costs just £10 per year and I would only move to another provider if the email forwarding delay was down to them. It clearly is not - forwarding to outlook.com is very quick as well. Clearly something odd going on at Yahoo.

[mc2fool]

You can change where the Email is forwarded without changing who holds the domain (moving domains can be a bit of a faff).

Yes, that is what we will do, at least for the emails that are more time critical. 123reg costs just £10 per year and I would only move to another provider if the email forwarding delay was down to them. It clearly is not - forwarding to outlook.com is very quick as well. Clearly something odd going on at Yahoo.

Yahoo does have a habit of greylisting a mail server if it's had a lot of dodgy emails from it, and when it does so it gives a "soft" fail to messages from that server. As it's a soft fail the sending server will keep the message in its out queue and retry delivery, most typically at four hour intervals, and Yahoo will (usually) accept it on a subsequent retry.

It's possible that's what's happening to you, that Yahoo has greylisted the 123-Reg mail servers and so is delaying messages sent through them. Unfortunately, I don't think 123-Reg has the tools to enable you to check if that's what's happening (as you could if you had a WHM/cPanel control panel).

If you google for Message temporarily deferred you'll find lots on Yahoo returning that soft error to sending servers.

[Infrasonic]

Yahoo (along with eBay) were one of the founders of the DMARC initiative (agreed handling protocols around SPF and DKIM settings) to cut down on spam being delivered to inboxes via spoofing et al.

Most of the webmail providers have tightened their DMARC criteria lately around SMTP protocols, certificates, configuration, reputation (spam).

Outlook.com have been bouncing some legitimate domain and bulk emailers. viewtopic.php?f=39&t=18926
I've had issues even with whitelisted contacts being constantly spam foldered (probably because the sender has an SMTP/IP blacklisting issue with their provider).

https://mxtoolbox.com/NetworkTools.aspx

[hiriskpaul]

You can change where the Email is forwarded without changing who holds the domain (moving domains can be a bit of a faff).

Yes, that is what we will do, at least for the emails that are more time critical. 123reg costs just £10 per year and I would only move to another provider if the email forwarding delay was down to them. It clearly is not - forwarding to outlook.com is very quick as well. Clearly something odd going on at Yahoo.

Yahoo does have a habit of greylisting a mail server if it's had a lot of dodgy emails from it, and when it does so it gives a "soft" fail to messages from that server. As it's a soft fail the sending server will keep the message in its out queue and retry delivery, most typically at four hour intervals, and Yahoo will (usually) accept it on a subsequent retry.

It's possible that's what's happening to you, that Yahoo has greylisted the 123-Reg mail servers and so is delaying messages sent through them. Unfortunately, I don't think 123-Reg has the tools to enable you to check if that's what's happening (as you could if you had a WHM/cPanel control panel).

If you google for Message temporarily deferred you'll find lots on Yahoo returning that soft error to sending servers.

Interesting thanks, never heard of greylisting before, but it sounds as though that is exactly what is happening as there is no delay with either gmail or outlook.com.

So moving the domain to a different provider may fix this. How difficult is that? There is no web hosting involved with this domain, just email forwarding. Can anyone recommended a domain host that does not have this problem?

[hiriskpaul]

Yahoo (along with eBay) were one of the founders of the DMARC initiative (agreed handling protocols around SPF and DKIM settings) to cut down on spam being delivered to inboxes via spoofing et al.

Most of the webmail providers have tightened their DMARC criteria lately around SMTP protocols, certificates, configuration, reputation (spam).

Outlook.com have been bouncing some legitimate domain and bulk emailers. viewtopic.php?f=39&t=18926
I've had issues even with whitelisted contacts being constantly spam foldered (probably because the sender has an SMTP/IP blacklisting issue with their provider).

https://mxtoolbox.com/NetworkTools.aspx

It sounds as though outlook.com might prove to be a problem as well then. I have had problems with Yahoo with genuine bulk mail not arriving and not even appearing in spam folders.

[johnhemming]

Greylisting has been around for a long time. It can be a real nuisance causing delays in transfer of email, but in theory once a sender has passed through greylisting then it should not delay messages. Hence if you have two emails from the same source the first of which is delayed then it is greylisting.

I am using Zoho mail myself which I find to be reasonably good. I also have an old hotmail account (which may be 20 years old now or close to that), a gmail account and a server I have written myself which I intend making publicly available as a service as soon as I think it is working well enough. I do have a yahoo account, but I never look at it. There might be emails in it.

I like to download my emails to my laptop which is why I want a system with POP availability.

[Infrasonic]

Yahoo (along with eBay) were one of the founders of the DMARC initiative (agreed handling protocols around SPF and DKIM settings) to cut down on spam being delivered to inboxes via spoofing et al.

Most of the webmail providers have tightened their DMARC criteria lately around SMTP protocols, certificates, configuration, reputation (spam).

Outlook.com have been bouncing some legitimate domain and bulk emailers. viewtopic.php?f=39&t=18926
I've had issues even with whitelisted contacts being constantly spam foldered (probably because the sender has an SMTP/IP blacklisting issue with their provider).

https://mxtoolbox.com/NetworkTools.aspx

It sounds as though outlook.com might prove to be a problem as well then. I have had problems with Yahoo with genuine bulk mail not arriving and not even appearing in spam folders.

If it's not appearing at all it's probably being black holed (which is a bit too extreme imho). Forwarding will cause you more delivery problems than 'pulling' email from 123REG via POP3/IMAP as you are adding an extra layer to the DMARC chain from a potentially grey/blacklisted SMTP/IP source (123REG).
Have you checked your domain health via that MX toolbox link?

[johnhemming]

In support of the comment about forwarding. It is best to avoid forwarding, but instead have mail sent directly to the host that you want the mail to end up on. Services like Outlook and zoho can handle this. I would have thought that yahoo could do this as it isn't that difficult.

[hiriskpaul]

Yahoo (along with eBay) were one of the founders of the DMARC initiative (agreed handling protocols around SPF and DKIM settings) to cut down on spam being delivered to inboxes via spoofing et al.

Most of the webmail providers have tightened their DMARC criteria lately around SMTP protocols, certificates, configuration, reputation (spam).

Outlook.com have been bouncing some legitimate domain and bulk emailers. viewtopic.php?f=39&t=18926
I've had issues even with whitelisted contacts being constantly spam foldered (probably because the sender has an SMTP/IP blacklisting issue with their provider).

https://mxtoolbox.com/NetworkTools.aspx

It sounds as though outlook.com might prove to be a problem as well then. I have had problems with Yahoo with genuine bulk mail not arriving and not even appearing in spam folders.

If it's not appearing at all it's probably being black holed (which is a bit too extreme imho). Forwarding will cause you more delivery problems than 'pulling' email from 123REG via POP3/IMAP as you are adding an extra layer to the DMARC chain from a potentially grey/blacklisted SMTP/IP source (123REG).
Have you checked your domain health via that MX toolbox link?

I am currently paying 123 reg about £10 per year for the domain and email forwarding. I don't really want to buy a load of mail boxes from them as the cost would rise substantially, although I appreciate the advantages, especially if this greylisting nonsense proliferates. If we do eventually have to buy mailboxes I would want to review whether 123 reg were the best choice for that as I suspect I may get a better deal with another provider. For the moment Gmail, with free 15Gb mailboxes seem to be the way to go.

Had a quick look at the MX toolbox, but could not get any sense out of it with respect to SMTP. it did not come back with anything for my domain. I tried google.com and that gave me nothing either! I am only using my phone though, so will try again later on a PC.

[hiriskpaul]

In support of the comment about forwarding. It is best to avoid forwarding, but instead have mail sent directly to the host that you want the mail to end up on. Services like Outlook and zoho can handle this. I would have thought that yahoo could do this as it isn't that difficult.

Yes sure, but the issue here is that I don’t want to buy mailboxes from 123 Reg if I can possibly avoid it. If there was another provider that offered to host the domain and provided multiple free or relatively cheap mail boxes, I would be interested to hear about it.

Forwarding is free, 15Gb Gmail mailboxes are free and from the tests I conducted yesterday, forwarding to Gmail accounts only suffers a second or 2 delay.

[johnhemming]

If, however, you change the MX records at 123 to point to Gmail and configure GMAIL to accept your domain then the mail does not have to go anywhere near 123.

There are in a sense three things about mail being sent for a domain
a) Which organisation registers the domain
b) Which servers are used as name servers for the domain and
c) Which servers the MX records in the DNS point to (mail exchange).

a, b and c can be different or the same. you ideally want c to point to the servers which you use to hold the mail records.

I have myself standardised on using name.com for a) and b). For websites that is helpful as I can use an API to update records at name.com which means that every month a regular process updates all of my SSL certificates without human intervention or payment. (although I do pay for the account at name.com by paying for the registration of domains). Otherwise the problem with Lets Encrypt certificates is that they only last for about 3 months.