"My E-mail is Not Working!"

I probably get a handful of e-mails and phone calls each day making the above claim. Unfortunately, "not working" doesn't' give me or your provider much to go on to figure out what is going on.

E-mail isn't always instantaneous. And, as more services and people go online, added with online telephone services (VOIP) all using the same pipelines -- things will continue to have hiccups or slowdowns. Sometimes there are geographic issues that cause a certain area of the pipeline to be blocked. Say a backhoe hits a fiber optic cable in St. Louis. That could cause a domino effect and cause e-mail to take longer to get from point A to point B.

So, how do you determine what, if anything, isn't working?

1. If you can Send e-mail but cannot Receive e-mail, you need to contact your incoming/server provider. This applies to those who use their own domain address as an e-mail address. Typically these folks have a different INCOMING server than that provided by their ISP.


2. If you can Receive but you cannot Send, then you need to contact your ISP as it is the OUTGOING server (SMTP) advised by your connectivity provider (ISP) that is not allowing you to Send.

It is always a good idea to check your ISP's "Network Status" page to see if they are aware of any problems or issues that may be causing network delays of e-mail delivery.

When you determine who you should call (your hosting provider/incoming e-mail server or your connectivity provider/outgoing e-mail server) you need to provide the detailed specific error message (word for word) that you are receiving when you go to send or check e-mail. This error message is imperative to determining where the problem may be and if there is anything anyone can do about it.

Your service providers will most certainly appreciate you providing as many details as possible when you contact them with problems -- "not working" is really of no help at all.