An email I was expecting did not arrive

In the world of email there are various issues and problems that can occur. This particular article guides you through troubleshooting an issue where you are expecting an email yet it does not arrive. There can be various causes and the issue can be from the sending side, the route in between the sender and your email hosting server, or your email server itself. While you cannot do anything about the sender's side or the route in between, we do have some tips to help you rule out or find the issue on your side.

 

The first test is to check and ensure your email account is working in general and is receiving email properly. The easiest way to do this is to send yourself a test email. It is best to send the test message from a third party email service such as Yahoo or Gmail, but you can use any InMotion email account if you do not have a third party account. Optionally, you can have a friend send you a test message.

If your email account does not receive the test message the sending email account should receive a notice known as a bounceback. The bounceback message will contain information on why it was not received properly. We have an article that lists some of the more common reasons why emails are returned. If you do not receive the email and the sending account does not receive a bounceback email, you will want to contact our Live Support department for further investigation.

If your email address is receiving emails in general, you may want to check the IP address to see if it is being blacklisted by spam filtering services. You will need the sender's mail IP address to perform this test. Once you have the IP address, you can check it using our Online IP BLacklist Checker. If the IP address is being blacklisted, either the sender or the sender's host will need to contact the companies involved to get the IP off the list. It is very common for mail servers to be blacklisted and removed regularly from the filtering services.

 

If the MX records are incorrect, this can affect the way email is sent and received. You can check the MX records for your domain by using the MX Entry tool in the cPanel. Your MX records should appear at the bottom of the page. If you do not see any records, there should be a message stating it will default to the domain's A record, which is fine if you are using InMotion Hosting for your email. If your MX records are incorrect, you can either delete and recreate them, or contact our Live Support team for additional help.

 

If you check all the above and everything appears to be normal, it may be time to check with our Live Support team. They have the ability to check into server logs to see if there was an attempted delivery. Even failed attempts are logged, so if the email contacted our servers for any reason, there will be a record of it. If there is no record of a delivery attempt, this means the email had issues either from the sending server or somewhere along the route. Troubleshooting will then need to take place starting on the sender's side.