Cannot use SMTP

[Sup3rkirby]

Well this is certainly getting to be rather frustrating (as one problem arises after another).

Currently I am needing to connect to and use SMTP for a mail account on my site in order to send messages/email to users. However the problem is that connecting to SMTP always fails. One might think "perhaps you should check your credentials and/or settings" but if that were the case then one of my many attempts over the past few weeks would have succeeded.

Visiting the 'Configure Email Client' option in cPanel and using the 'Manual Settings' section I've tried all of the provided information and even a few 'guesses' to try and connect to the SMTP server in order to send a mail but nothing has worked. As far as clients I've been using Thunderbird and the PHPMailer class to try and connect (and send mail). Thunderbird is able to connect to my site emails and read messages but this is as far as anything has ever gone. Once the attempt to connect to SMTP occurs everything starts to fail (every time). The RoundCube webmail client seems to work flawlessly for both but I have been unable to find SMTP settings used by this client and since I can't have my site send out mails automatically via RoundCube is doesn't help my situation.

I assume the SSL/TLS is not available to free accounts, but one would assume the normal SMTP connection would be available(and work).


The only other thing I feel might be relevant is Thunderbird notifies me of security certificate problems when I intially connected (once for incoming, once for outgoing) to the mail servers (I permanently stored the exceptions to avoid hassle). But of course even with the notification of a security certificate problem on the SMTP server, it still never connects (ask to retry or re-enter the password).

[Sup3rkirby]

Well it seems I found my solution from a user's previous post: SMTP host down

Apparently SMTP actually doesn't work at all. It certainly would be nice for x10hosting to clarify, state or at least affirm this somewhere for their users. I've noticed quite a large number of topics about SMTP problems without ever getting any sort of solution(usually the threads are just closed).

Thunderbird still doesn't work but thankfully this user was also using the PHPMailer class and provided information on how to set things up without using SMTP.