| Q: | How long does it take (on average) to send 10.000 messages? |
| A: | How long transmission will take depends on several factors, among others: |
•The speed and load of your PC;
•The speed and load of your internet connection (esp. the upstream rate of your connection);
•The speed and load of the accepting mail server (as well as potential limitations set by your service provider, e.g. 10 messages per connection);
•The total size of the message, including all images and attachments;
•Firewalls, anti-virus scanner and other proxies reading / filtering the data transfer.
Step '
4. Preview' in the program will give you a rough estimation of how long your transmission will take, assuming an optimal internet connection.
| Q: | To how many recipients can SmartSerialMail send a message at once, is there a limit? |
| A: | SmartSerialMail has no limit for recipients. The only possibility for a limit is that your provider uses one.
To send to a big list of recipients you can set the time delay in the sending options at point ' Profile'. This causes a delay after a user defined number of mails.
If your provider has a limit of 10 mails per minute for example, you can set sending of 10 mails and a delay of 1 minute. |
| Q: | Can SmartSerialMail deliver the mail directly to the receiving mailbox? |
| A: | This feature can be found in "Send Mode" at point ' Profile'.
In the "Outgoing Server Options" you can then select "Direct Delivery". |
| Q: | How do we know whether the mail is successfully sent or not? |
| A: | When SmartSerialMail says it has sent the mail, the SMTP server has accepted the mail for delivery. If it doesn't get delivered it most likely has been moved to a junk folder. |
| Q: | If the mail is not sent, is there any way of resending the failed mails? |
| A: | If a mail cannot be sent, it is marked as “Error” to signal the failure. If the problem has been fixed, the status can be changed to “unsent” in step ' 2. Recipients' and resent. |
| Q: | I can only use the Gmail SMTP server successfully. May I know what other free SMTP server can be used, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Netscape, AOL and etc.? I have tried using Yahoo and Hotmail but was not successful. Can you give me advice, what their settings are? |
| A: | You can find out the settings of different providers on the webpages of the providers. Please keep in mind that especially freemail providers are often blacklisted and mail coming from such sources are directly marked as junk. |
| Q: | Whenever SmartSerialMail tries to send messages, I receive an error message. |
| A: | Please check your settings to allow sending via SMTP. If you have a firewall installed on your system, please make sure to add SmartSerialMail to the list of allowed applications in your firewall. |
| Q: | I receive an error message after a certain number of message are sent. (e.g. „connection closed gracefully“) |
| A: | Some SMTP servers limit the number of messages sent per time interval. Please use the option "Processing with a time delay" in the "Sending Options" of Step ' 1. Profile' and reduce the number of mail messages sent per time interval. The optimal settings for this options can only be determined by experience and will differ for every provider. |
| Q: | When I try to send a message, I receive the error message: 'Could not send message. Unable to relay for' (address of receiver). |
| A: | The SMTP server you try to use does not forward your message. Perhaps you have chosen the wrong server, misspelled the servers name, your user name or your password. Your settings for sending mail should be the same as in your normal mail client (e.g. Outlook).
You can find further information in the SmartSerialMail Help under:' 1. Profile' |
| Q: | I’ve downloaded the demo / full version of SmartSerialMail, but I can send mail to addresses of my domain only. So just my colleagues (…@my-corporation.com) receive my mail messages; all other addresses result in the error message “Relay access denied”. Why? |
| A: | "Relay access denied" means, your SMTP server restricts you to sending mail within your own domain. If this occurs, in most cases you haven’t provided authentication for using this SMTP server or the server is ill-configured.
To provide authentication for using the full SMTP service: |
•Open the dialog “Advanced SMTP Server Options” in step ' 1. Profile',
•Activate the authentication (“Server requires authentication”),
•Enter your username and password for the SMTP server.
If this doesn’t work, ask your service provider, why the SMTP server restricts you from relaying.
| Q: | I use the McAfee Security Center and my recipients receive broken HTML mail messages. The mail starts with two lines containing 'DATA'. |
| A: | Please deactivate scanning of outgoing mail in the McAfee Security Center: |
•Right click on the red McAffee icon in the system tray.
•Go to 'Virus Scan', click on 'Options'. This will bring up a new window.
•Go to the second tab which is labeled 'Mail'.
•Uncheck 'Outbound Mail Messages' in 'Scan Options'
| Q: | I received error messages similar to 'Could not add image: xxx' during sending of HTML mail. |
| A: | Please ensure that the path to the image is absolute as in 'c:\images\aImage.jpg' and NOT relative as in 'aImage.jpg'. Also SmartSerialMail does NOT currently support UNC paths like \\server1\images\aImage.jpg |
| Q: | I use AOL as a service provider, but I receive the error message
'AOL has identified this mail to be unsolicited bulk mail' most the time. |
| A: | AOL scans all mail sent via port 25. Use port 587 (message submission port) instead, to avoid this problem. Open the "advanced outgoing server options” dialog in step ' 1. Profile' and set the port of your SMTP server to 587. |
| Q: | The connection test to Freenet and gmx.net addresses fails.
Outgoing mail servers : mx.freenet.de and mail.gmx.net |
| A: | Almost all public / free SMTP server demand authentication, so you have to activate this feature in SmartSerialMail and provide a username as well as a password. |
•Open the dialog “Advanced SMTP Server Options” in step ' 1. Profile',
•Activate the authentication (“Server requires authentication”),
•Enter your username and password for the SMTP server.
| Often, these servers are also limited to a certain amount of mail messages per session / connection. You should use the “Processing with a time delay” option in Step ' 1. Profile' for failure free transmission of your messages. |
| Q: | I have no problems sending mail to small groups, but I get error messages, if I try to send mail to larger groups (e.g. 250 recipients).
“SMTP Server error: Socket Error #10054. Connection reset by peer. ---“
I know from past mailings, that the mail addresses are all valid. What does it mean ? |
| A: | This error message could appear under many conditions. Most of the time it means, that your provider limits the amount of mail you can send via this server in a certain period of time. E.g. you may send only 20 mail messages every 20 minutes. Please ask your provider about the details of these limitations.
You can use the “Processing with a time delay” option in Step ' 1. Profile' for failure free transmission of your messages.
You can find further information in the SmartSerialMail Help under:' 1. Profile' |
| Q: | My registered version of SmartSerialMail worked well until I installed Norton Internet Security 2008 yesterday. Something tries to block the outgoing mails from SmartSerialMail. When I test, my connection mails are perfectly send. |
| A: | This is a well-known issue with Norton. The Norton software installs a mail proxy, which accepts the mails for scanning instead of the SMTP server. SmartSerialMail marks the messages as "Sent", but the proxy doesn’t transmit the messages to the SMTP server. It discards the messages as being SPAM.
We recommend that you deactivate the proxy. Unfortunately, proxies can prevent the transmission of messages, but most of the time you can be quite sure, that the messages were sent, if they are marked so. |
| Q: | The SMTP server I'm using (Lyris mail engine) sends bounced mail back a little different than most mail packages. Is there a way to customize what constitutes a bounce and how it's formatted? |
| A: | This depends on the bounced mail. If you send us such a bounced mail, intact, as attachment we can have a closer look. |
| Q: | What do such an error report mean?
“Error : Could not send message. (You have exceeded message sending limit, and I will not accept any messages from you within 15 minutes)”
Is it some kind of program limitation or something else? |
| A: | This is not a limitation from SmartSerialMail. This is a typical provider limitation with a sending quota. e.g. maximum 20 mails per hour. Contact your provider and ask him for a different access.
You can use the “Processing with a time delay” option in Step ' 1. Profile' for failure free transmission of your messages. |
| Q: | I'm trying to send a bulk mailing to my exhibitors - I'm getting the following error message
“Error : Could not send message. (... Relaying temporarily denied. Cannot resolve PTR record for XXX.XXX.30.60)”
Is this your error or have I screwed something up? |
| A: | This is an internal error with the provider’s mail server. Consult your provide and state your problem. |