What ports do I use for outbound email?

Knowledgebase Article

What ports do I use for outbound email?

Overview

We support two types of outbound SMTP on our mail servers... Encrypted and unencrypted. Most people choose to use unencrypted, though we provide the encrypted connection as a service to those who feel more comfortable using it.

How do I use the unencrypted SMTP service?

We operate this service on both ports 25 and 587 on our servers. If you use these, you have to have the "requires SSL" checkbox (or similar) unchecked in your mail client. Many ISPs block outbound SMTP sessions on port 25 to block spam generated by virus infected computers (see this article), so if port 25 does not work we advise that you try our alternative on port 587, which should then work.

How do I use the encrypted SMTP service?

Port 465 is used for encrypted SMTP sessions, and if you decide to use this, you will need to tick the "requires SSL" checkbox (or similar) for the outbound mail server settings in your mail client. Note, whilst mail.yourdomain.ext will work fine as the hostname, you may find that your mail client will tell you that the SSL certificate is untrusted when it tries to connect. If this happens, you can just ignore it, and the mail sessions will still be encrypted. Alternatively, you can set the outbound mail server hostname to the server's shared SSL hostname, which is usually in the form "SERVERNAME.secure.kualo.net, or "SERVERNAME.secure.kgix.net" (the latter for resellers). Both actually connect to the same server, but the shared SSL hostname is the address that the secure certificate is provisioned to by the central certificate signing authority (GeoTrust).

As always, if you have any questions at all, just raise a ticket with our team and we're always happy to assist you.