Typical Email Error Messages

Included with your InMotion Hosting account you have the ability to set up and manage multiple email accounts. Email can be managed using many different email clients such as Thunderbird, Outlook, Mac Mail, and more. You may receive an email message when first configuring your email client or when you check your email. Here are a few of the most common messages:

Authentication Errors

Incorrect Password

When you set up the email account in cPanel for the first time you decide on the initial password for that specific email account. If you don’t remember the password, that’s okay too. As long as you can access cPanel, you can update or change your email account’s password. Please make sure you are using the email account password and not the cPanel password. If you need to change an email account’s password this can be done in the “Email Accounts” section of cPanel.

Invalid Username

Your username should be your full email address. If your domain is example.com and you have an email account for sales, the username would be [email protected]. Do not use your cPanel username as this will cause an error.

Unsecure Connection (or SSL Error)

All of our clients on a shared hosting package have access to a shared SSL certificate. You can configure your email client to use that SSL certificate when checking your email. To use the SSL, you will need to change a few settings. You will need to use “secure” instead of mail.example.com. If you have the email client to use the SSL but are not using the corrent mail server such as “secure108.inmotionhosting.com” it will cause a warning “Unsecure Connection” error.

503 valid RCPT Command Must Precede Data

If you are getting this message, ensure you have selected “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication” when you setup your email client.

Other

If you are still getting an error message and you’re not sure about how to resolve the issue, please contact our technical support department. We will be happy to assist you further.

50 thoughts on “Typical Email Error Messages

  1. 10 email accounts.  All having issues with sending email from mobile email.  I can send from a computer, but not from iphones.  We continue to receive message stating “cannot send mail” “recipient has been rejected by the server”

    We can all receive email. and we can send from a computer.  

     

    I need help! We have to be able to send email!

     

    Thanks

    1. Hello!

      I’m sorry to see that you are experiencing issues with sending emails from your iPhone. I recommend checking to make sure that the “default SMTP server” is set properly for the email account(s) on each iPhone. This guide will assist you in finding/editing the Outgoing SMTP settings. I hope this helps!

      Sincerely,
      Carlos D.

    2. Dear Staff,

      I have multiple e-mail accounts tied to my website, and in the past few months emails are being received and sent much more slowly than before. Email quota has not been exceeded. Any idea as to what may be causing the issue?

      Thank you in advance for any help,

      Kyle

  2. I was having trouble accessing Facebook from my email — it was using Mozilla Foxfire and had become very slow.  Since I also have Google Chrome loaded, I decided to uninstall Mozilla Foxfire, which I did.  After that, when I click on a facebook post, I get the following error message : “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.”  I have no system administrator, because this is my private computer.  What do I do?

    1. I recommend you disable the server and then enable it again. If that does not correct the issue, you should try to remove and add the IMAP account to Outlook. Otherwise, contact Outlook to further assistance in troubleshooting their Software.

    2. Hi, I often get a message that my email has not been sent and is in the outbox (Unable to send mail. A copy has been placed in your Outbox. Mail will try to send the message again later) and I have to manually resend it or it just stays there for ever. This doe snot always happen, so the settings cannot be entirely wrong. Mostly it works. When it happens it happens on a cell data connection and on wifi alike and it only happens when I am using my inmotion based account to send, from mi iphone and ipad using mail.app. It does not happen on my mac. And again, it does not always happen. But I am never sure my emails are sent, and that message doe snot always appear, so I always have to check my sent messages. Any ideas? thanks!

  3. Thank you! I did change the password this morning and I emailed support but have not heard back from anyone yet.

  4. One of the emails on our account is apparently sending out emails on it’s own and I’m getting mail delivery failures message every few minutes. I have gotten over 60 in the past 3 hours!

    1. I recommend changing that email account’s password immediately, to mitigate the poor reputation that other servers may begin detecting from these Spam emails being sent to their servers.

      Then, I recommend you review your Exim log to locate the script sending the emails. If you do not have root access, you may want to contact our Technical Support team to have them review the logs for you and assist in locating any potentially malicious scripts stored in your account.

  5. When I try to create an email in my CPanel, I am getting an error message with no information.  I have multiple domains that I have tried setting up for and all get the same no informaiton error.  please help!

    1. Hello!

      I’m sorry to see you are experiencing an error when you try to create email accounts. I can understand that being frustrating. I recommend you review your cPanel user’s mail directory. You can SSH into your server and run the following command:

      stat /home/userna5/mail

      Be sure to replace userna5 with your cPanel username. This will output the details of the mail directory, including permissions and last accessed information. If for some reason the directory does not exist, run:

      mkdir /home/userna5/mail

      to create it. Again, be sure to replace userna5 with your cPanel username. Then retry adding an email account in cPanel again. If the issues persists, check for the user’s etc directory in the same location. If that one is missing then run the same command to create it, replacing mail with etc:

      mkdir /home/userna5/etc

      The default permissions should be sufficient as long as you are creating the directory (running the commands in SSH) as your cPanel user. You can also create these directories using cPanel’s File Manager. If you create them in File Manager, just be sure you are creating them in the user’s home directory.

      If you are a customer of InMotion Hosting, you can always reach out to our 24/7/365 Live Support for further assistance as well. I hope this helps!

      Sincerely,
      Carlos E

  6. My Iphone recently stopped down loading emails from my normal site.  The details say NOT TRUSTED.  Expires 2.23.20 3:59:59 PM.  I have changed nothing on the phone regarding recieving or sending email.  Please advise

  7. I have several email accounts associated with my Inmotion site. Recently the email has been behaving inconsistently. I bought a new phone (upgraded from an iPhone 4S to a 6S) and that seemed to solve the problem (I do all my email on the phone).

    But today it’s worse than ever. I can receive emails thru my Inmotion accounts, but I cannot reply to any of them or send new messages. Each time I try, I get the message:

    “Cannot Verify Server Identity, The identity of “alternaprof.com” cannot be verified by Mail.

    I have tried numerous fixes I found online. I tried deleting and adding the accounts back. I tried switching from POP to IMAP. No change. Each time I send a message from my gmail account it goes through, but I can never reply. The error message is the same every time.

    I tried calling customer service and got a recording saying the wait time was 60 minutes. I have never had to wait long for Inmotion before. Are you swamped by other people complaining about the same thing?

    1. Hello Barry,

      Sorry for the issues with not identifying the server. We’re working on an article to address this since Apple has not taken full responsibility for the issue. They have provided several support articles as it does not only affect Apple devices but also Microsoft Office users working on Apple computers. The basic solution they provide is that you delete your email account and then re-create it. All outgoing email will need to be removed too. Refer to the articles listed below for specific directions:

      Mac:
      https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201419
      https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7846028

      Microsoft Outlook for Mac:
      https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7684684?start=0&tstart=0

      I hope this helps! Please let us know if you still need assistance after trying these solutions.

      If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know.

      Regards,
      Arnel C.

  8. HELLO!

    I have a problem when entering the remote webmail mail , error ” Sorry for the inconvenience ! The filesystem mounted at / on this server is running out of disk space . cPanel operations temporarily suspended Have Been to Prevent something bad from happening . Please ask your system admin to remove any files not in use on That partition “

    1. Hello Bike House,

      Apologies for the problem with email and the hard drive running out of space. If you are not the owner of the account, then you would need to contact the administrator and make them aware of the issue you are seeing. If you are the account owner, you can contact our live technical support to see if space can be freed up. If you have access to the cPanel account, you may need to look at the files in the cPanel file manager to see what you can clear. There may be error files or other files that can be deleted to bring server operations back to normal.

      If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know.

      Regards,
      Arnel C.

  9. My problem is that I’m using my email on mobile phone and labtop. The issue her is that the sent folder is not syncing between both devicies?!!

    1. Hello Turki,

      Thank you for contacting us. I recommend setting up all devices using the IMAP option, this stores folders on the server by default, and allows you to view the same folders across devices.

      Next, ensure you are subscribed to the IMAP folders on the devices. The specific steps will differ based on what clients you are using.

      Thank you,
      John-Paul

  10. I was able to follow all the steps in the tutorial video in setting up my email account but still there is an error on sending test email. below is the message;

    Send test e-mail message: Your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server has reported an internal error. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).  The server responded: 503 Valid RCPT command must precede DATA

     

    Please see if you can help on this.

  11. I am trying to setup a new email account in Outlook 2010 Windows 7.  My email account is [email protected].  I am getting this error message when I do a Test Account Settings…….

    Send test e-mail message: Cannot find the e-mail server. Verify the server information in your account properties.

    How do I fix this?

  12. Hi,

    Please tell me how can I stop email delivery attempts?
    I’m getting warning message after warning message (for ex. for message 1Zjihv-000003-PZ). As obviousely the email address is wrong it will never be delliverd. But the system still continues trying. How can I stop this?
    I’m having trouble because now my IP has been blocked because of too many errors from my IP by other recipients postmasters where I’m trying to send emails and where recipient email address is correct so that my messages are not delivered to them (for ex message 1Zj2fG-0007YL-HY).

    This is urgent, how can I stop delivery attempts?

    Thanks.

    1. Hello Ines,

      Sorry for the problem with the email delivery attempts error. The repeated delivery attempts are a normal server behavior if an email address fails. Also, these are rules that we as the sending server cannot stop – these errors are coming from the destination email server. The exchange of error information is normal behavior between email servers when there are delivery problems. Email servers will not normally block you just because you have a few email addresses that are not being delivered.

      They do have rules for too many errors because some spammers may try to send emails to a large list of made-up names in hopes of hitting legitimate email addresses on an email server. If you are sending email to legitimate email addresses and you’re being blocked, then you need to look at the header for the actual error message. There may be another reason for the emails being blocked. We would need to have a copy of the bounce-back message so that we can verify it and de-list the server if it is blacklisted. IF you are delivering emails with our hosting and you have a unique IP address, then you will be responsible for your email server reputation. Check out “Why do mail servers get blacklisted?” for further information.

      If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know.

      Regards,
      Arnel C.

  13. Hi, I am having troubles when i send emails to hotmail or live accounts.

    The emails appear in “Junk”.

    Can you please help me?

  14. I set up my new chief’s email today, but it just puts a new inbox at the bottom of default inbox, junk, sent, trash, etc. folders.  How do I get it to show up in these folders instead of an additional “inbox” below his email address.  

    Thank you

    1. Hello Steph,

      Sorry for the problem with the email client. We’re not sure what email client you’re setting up. I’m suspecting a Mac email client, but it could be anything. If you want to change the root settings, then you need click on the main Inbox, and change the settings for that account. You must also subscribe to certain folders if you’re using IMAP. This is normal for any email client setup.

      If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know.

      Regards,
      Arnel C.

  15. Watched video on setting up outlook 2010 email. Process did not work for me. test failed.connection to server failed. typed   mail.msn.com    as server

    Ken

    1. Hello Ken,

      Do you have an email account on the msn.com mail server? If so, be sure to check your username and password. Some servers (like ours) require the full email address as the username ([email protected]) whereas some only require the first portion (user). Username/password errors account for the vast majority of connection failures.

      Kindest Regards,
      Scott M

    2. I think I have exceeded the amount of emails I should have in my trash folder. Messages will not load in the trash folders. I want to delete the folder but cannot. Comes up server error. I get an error about corrupt email when I close round cube. I want to delete this file on roundcube but cannot I am using Mozilla. Any suggestions?

    3. Hello carriagelady,

      Thank you for your question. Sometimes this happens when there is a large amount of emails, and you are using IMAP.

      Our Support Department can setup IMAP Archiving, which can help reduce the amount of files in a single folder. They can also help you delete the folders after verifying your account.

      If you have any further questions, feel free to post them below.
      Thank you,

      -John-Paul

  16. I just discovered (on my mobile device) that some of my incoming email is being captured as SPAM and not getting to my inbox.  I do not have a spam folder in the list of folders (favorite, Outlook data, etc.) in my Outlook 2010.  How can I add that so I do not lose or miss important emails?

    Thanks,

    Grant

    1. Hello Grant, and thanks for your comment.

      I do see that you have a .spam folder on the server-side for your email account. It looks like this is coming from the SpamAssassin settings you’re currently using on your account.

      You can either login to webmail to see any messages that make it to your spam folder. Or if you’ve setup the account as IMAP in Outlook, you can subscribe to an IMAP folder in Outlook 2010 and select the spam folder there as well to check from your desktop.

      Please let us know if you have any further questions at all!

      – Jacob

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