ASP.NET Programmer

Thunderbird Error: Cannot connect to SMTP Server

On my rebuilt machine, I was trying to connect up to my email account on webhost4life using Thunderbird. Great Outlook alternative that is free for those who are interested (part of the Mozilla initiative). Anyway once I set this up, mail came flowing in fine, but it wasn’t going out to save anything. I’d just get an error message saying: Cannot connect to SMTP Server. I had the reference to the SMTP format correct for webhost4life (mail.webserver.com) and the user name and password were accurate. After several turns at it from Telnet, I discovered the port was the issue. It was receiving mail fine on the default 110 port, but 25 just wasn’t wanting to send. After some tinkering, 366 seemed to cooperate so that is what it came to be set as. To update the port, simply go to Tools > Account Settings > Outgoing SMTP Server > click Edit on the server in question and update the port underneath the server name. Nothing is to say that 366 will work for you. Its best to check with your webhost.

Another hiccup I ran across. If you have several email accounts setup in Firebird and several SMTP servers to go with them, make sure that all the accounts pointing to their correct server. I was trying to send out from email address B and constantly getting ‘this user does not exist on the recipient server’ which I knew they did. It turns out it was trying to use the SMTP server from email address A thus wasn’t relaying properly. Once it was changed, all was well. To update the SMTP server, simply go under Tools > Account Settings > Highlight the email address in question and pick the correct SMTP server from the drop down. By default, this will most likely be pointing to the first SMTP server you set up.