SMTP host down

[Kichi]

Hi!

I can't connect to my SMTP host: "mail.kristijanl.pcriot.com".
What should I do to send my mails?

[Kichi]

I waited for 24 hrs, but nothing happens.
My SMTP is still down.
I tried everything I could dozens of times during the day with no result.

It's probably out of my hand to deal with it.
Could you (support) please restart or do something about it.
I really need that SMTP.

Edit:
It might by similar situation as in this case:
SMTP Error. Could not connect to SMTP host.
Only difference is that I'm trying to use my local SMTP.

[Kichi]

Once again, I solved the problem without any support.

After hours and hours of searching the Internet (including this forum) I found out that the problem might be that x10hosting blocked the usage of port 25.
(The reason I discovered it so late is because I used port 25 a month ago on this hosting and I would never guessed that they blocked it just now)

So I test it with a simple terminal command:

telnet mail.kristijanl.pcriot.com 25

And it returned:

Trying 69.175.122.178...
Connected to kristijanl.pcriot.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-stoli.x10hosting.com ESMTP Exim 4.69 #1 Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:16:01 -0400 
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited, 
220 and/or bulk e-mail.

If you get the same message like I did now, then the problem is that port 25 is blocked.
This means that you cannot use SMTP anymore.

Alternative way is to use port 465 (SSMTP - Secure Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).
If you are using PHPMailer class, you will also need to change "TLS" to "SSL".

So your PHP code should look like this:

            $mail->IsSMTP();
            $mail->SMTPAuth = true;
            $mail->SMTPSecure = "ssl"; // sets the prefix to the servier
            $mail->Host = SMTP_HOST;
            $mail->Port = 465;
            $mail->Password = SMTP_PASS;
            $mail->Username = SMTP_USER; 

Now, it should work becouse port 465 isn't blocked (yet ).


Hereby I would like to express my disappointment in x10hosting support services.
Not only they didn't notify me (and the rest of us) about the blockade, but they even couldn't answer me that simple question in the past two days. After all, support should know
the answer of a problem I just encountered. This is very simple solution.

I don't want to be rude, but I think that support should be equally good as other great services that x10hosting offers.


Thank you, I think...

Kichi