One-click email delivery: That’s why everyone prefers to send email through mobile devices. but this convenience can be upset when email errors suddenly crop up.
In our role as outsourced technical support for web hosting providers, email errors are an important category of issues we resolve for customers.
Today we will talk about the “cannot send mail to recipient “user@domain.com” was rejected by the server” error that some users receive when sending mail from their apple devices.
4 reasons why you get the error “mail cannot be sent, the recipient was rejected by the server”
When customers try to send emails with their iphone or ipad devices, they sometimes get this error. the error says that the server rejected the recipient.
This does not necessarily mean you are sending to the wrong recipient address. if the mail server senses that you are trying to relay it without proper authentication, you get this error.
This happens due to 4 main reasons, as we will see here.
1. incorrect configuration
When you set up the mail client on your iPhone, you must specify the incoming and outgoing mail servers associated with that account, along with the username and password.
iphone settings show outgoing mail server details as optional, so many users tend to ignore those fields. this leads to smtp authentication failure when sending mail.
When trying to send mail without authenticating, it only works if the mail server is an open relay. but almost all mail servers are not configured to be open relays.
mails sent without smtp authentication will be rejected by the mail server with the message “cannot send mail, the recipient was rejected by the server”.
2. software updates
In some cases, users report that emails that were working fine suddenly start giving errors. this usually happens after any software update on the device.
apple releases regular updates to ios to add features and security improvements. but certain updates may require changes to your email client’s settings, for emails to work properly.
3. connectivity issues
When the mail client cannot connect to the mail server, it can cause mail delivery errors. this can happen due to internet connectivity issues or smtp port blocking.
4. password errors
Periodic password resets are vital for security reasons. but when the passwords of the mail accounts are reset, these passwords must also be updated in the mail clients.
When the password of the mail account is incorrect, the mail server will not be able to authenticate the user. this can cause email delivery failure.
how to fix ‘cannot send mail, recipient was rejected by server’ error
To resolve the email send error with apple devices, we do these checks.
1. mail client configuration
First, we confirm that the user’s iphone mail client settings are configured correctly. this includes settings like:
- email account username
- email account password
- incoming and outgoing server details
- port smtp
- ssl support
Most errors due to incorrect mail client configuration are fixed once the configuration is successful.
2. ssl support
ssl support allows users to send and receive mail securely. some mail servers strictly enforce the use of the ssl option to send mail, as a security measure.
To enable ssl support in the mail client, users must select the outgoing server for the account and check “use ssl”. the smtp port is also updated to ssl, which is 465.
3. smtp port block
the smtp port to send mail is 25 by default. but on many servers this may be different to avoid spam. for the ssl function, this port is 465.
some mail servers also have port 587 as smtp port. Setting the correct smtp port on the mobile device and confirming there are no blocks is a vital step we take.
4. mail server configuration
If the device’s mail settings are fine, we check the mail server for misconfigurations, dns issues, routing errors, or firewall blocks that could be causing the mail issue.
conclusion
Mobile devices are very convenient for sending and receiving email instantly. but it is annoying for users to deal with related errors. today, we saw how our team of support engineers easily fixed the “cannot send mail, recipient was rejected by server” error for our customers.