why am i not receiving email via AOL email addreses?

[Gavin MacMillan]

Don’t really know Phill but if you use signlab to send send drawing ‘send image by email’ and try and send it as a jpeg aol will automatically refuse it without sending a email back to the sneder. Maybe it is something to do with people who have images imbedded in their email??

Someone will probably have a more sensible answer but that is certainly the case when emailing layouts

[Stephen Morriss]

I think you can add the customers domain name to your white list, this then allows the emails through, so you need to add the bit after the @ sign.
Apparently AOL even filter stuff out before it reaches your spam box so you wouldn’t see it in there anyway.

Steve

[Paul Hughes]

Hi Phill

Have the same problem from time to time. i use aol and have never worked out what it is. customers can get emails from me but i don’t get them from them.

had it they have emailed orders over and then days latter phone chasing delivery and we don’t know anything about the job. not good.

would love to know why, and how to stop it.

Paul

[Mike Fear]

The problem is that AOL is a load of rubbish, and will either block emails or send them straight to the junk or spam folder, especially if someone sends you more than one email or something with attachments.

9 times out of 10 when you send someone email to an aol account you know they arent going to get it, so its a complete waster of time ( often when replying to customers who use aol I wonder half way through typing the reply if it is really worth bothering ! )

Best way to stop it is to pay to get a proper email domain and web space for yourself, which also looks a lot more professional than something like ‘davessigns@aol.com’ or just change ISP to anyone who isnt aol

[Nicola McIntosh]

phil i had the same problems with aol, so i did as mike suggests got a couple of domain names, and dont use aol now, i know thats not helped you much 😕

nik

[Peter Normington]

Phil
I will go with the flow, AOL is for a start not very professional, don’t you have email on your domain name? like sales@therightsigns.com?
Peter

[Phill Fenton]

Yes guys – I do receive mail sent to anyname@mywebsite.co.uk – this is redirected to my AOL email address. I can’t send email out using these names though, so I have always stuck with my aol account.

In fact I discovered that mail does get through from these companies if sent to anyname@mywebsite.co.uk as it is subsequently re-directed. What I don’t understand is why it gets through this way, but not if sent directly. (If you look at my website under contact details you will see that I use this method to receive incoming mail from my website).

But I actually prefer my AOL address as it’s shorter and easier to remember and less likely to be misspelled.

I have never understood why using an AOL address is deemed to be "unprofessional though 😥

[Gavin MacMillan]

An AOL address isn’t very good, I would have to agree. Any ISP address isn’t great but as it’s generally accepted that AOL are terrible then there address seems just one step up from @yahoo.com or @ hotmail.com

If you have a domain name it is much better and more consistent to use that.

[Peter Normington]

quote Phill:

Yes guys – I do receive mail sent to anyname@mywebsite.co.uk – this is redirected to my AOL email address. I can’t send email out using these names though, so I have always stuck with my aol account.

In fact I discovered that mail does get through from these companies if sent to anyname@mywebsite.co.uk as it is subsequently re-directed. What I don’t understand is why it gets through this way, but not if sent directly. (If you look at my website under contact details you will see that I use this method to receive incoming mail from my website).

But I actually prefer my AOL address as it’s shorter and easier to remember and less likely to be misspelled.

I have never understood why using an AOL address is deemed to be “unprofessional though 😥

Phill why cant you send mail from yourname@yourwesite ?

Peter

[Phill Fenton]

My website is hosted by easyspace. When I first set it up there was only an option to have mail re-directed (i.e anyname@mywebsite.co.uk) to an existing email account. It was called pop3 mail (I think). There was no facility to set up individual usernames. Also there was no facility to send email out using the domain name address.

I don’t know if all this has changed though – I’ll need to look up easyspace and see what features are now available. I’ve used my AOL address for nearly 10 years now and would be reluctant to change it but if I am potentialy not receiving mail that I should, then I better see about changing it. The problem is I don’t know if someone has sent me an email that hasn’t come through until they complain "why didn’t you answer my email". Others may simply not bother to ask again if they don’t get a reply the first time.

[Warren Beard]

Hi Phill

Not sure about your problem but I work in a similar way but I use Google Mail, I have 3 email accounts that all divert to my Google Mail account, in Google Mail you can set an email address to use to reply to emails, so although you are sending from Google Mail the recipients mail will say it came from "anyname@mywebsite.co.uk"

Another benefit to using online email is you can access it anywhere anytime over any internet connection and any computer.

If you are looking to change I can recommend Google Mail to do what you are doing now but can reply using same email address.

cheers

Warren

[James Martin]

I had trouble emailing you a while back but put it down to you being on holiday on something.

Got a file here I want to send over there to youlater today anyway so well see what happens.

As for Easyspace: Don’t like them. they lost a Domain I had bought or they failed to register it in the first place and It wasted alot of my time. To top it they didn’t tell me the truth until I had run around trying to find out myself why I didn’t own it.

Anyway I use Fasthosts who have just upgraded the features I can use and its only a home package at the moment.

You can set it send an automatic response when you receive a message from someone telling them you will get back asap or whatever you like.

I’m not sure if it can be set to tell if a person has received my mail although when I had trouble emailing you I got a postmaster failed report thing so I knew at least you weren’t getting them,

Its less than a fiver a month.

I can redirect to my hotmail account as well.

[Stephen Morriss]

most isp’s will only let you use their outgoing mail server if you are connecting using their dialup or broadband.
So while you can usually connect to their incoming mail server (pop) because it requires you to use a password and username, outgoing mail servers (smtp) don’t usually have the ability to have usernames and passwords so can be miss-used for bulk spam mail if they are open to the Internet.
Only allowing access via their own network shuts this down.

Some smtp mail servers are available that do have authentication but you usually have to pay for their services, which on top of your isp charges can start to add up.

Phill your domain name is probebly in your white list on AOL hence it’s ability to send mail to your AOL account.

Steve

[Phill Fenton]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Warren – I’m thinking I could open a google account and redirect all of my AOL mail there along with my domain name mail. This way I can continue using my old address (receiving mail) while phasing in a domain name email address to existing correspondents and sending email out using a domain name address.

Stephen – thanks for your explanation. My domain name email is on my list of known correspondents.