Using external SMTP mail servers

Some people prefer to use resources such as gmail or yahoo mail etc for sending their business emails. There are differing schools of thought about the merits of doing so. If you deem that this is the best practice for your business, the following information may be of help to you.

NOTE: If you are self-hosting on a local PC server for development purposes, remember that your ISP (internet provider) usually blocks outgoing traffic on port 25, which is commonly used for email. Anything on port 25 destined for any server other than the ISP’s own email server is generally blocked in order to control spam. You will need to choose another port and use SMTPAUTH and specify the correct SMTP server credentials.

Yahoo Hosting

If you are using Yahoo as a webhost, doing a search in the Yahoo help pages for PHP/Perl set up may help. Also setting up a tmp file in your Yahoo account may shed a bunch of light on things and give you answers right away as to why the e-mail isn’t sending.

• In your Yahoo control panel, check if the email address you are using is set as “Pop/Webmail”, and not just “Mail Administrator”. You may have to create a new one.
• The Zen Cart option Emails must send from known domain must be set to YES, and mail transport should be SMTPAUTH.
• Yahoo Outgoing (SMTP) Mail Server: smtp.mail.yahoo.com
• SMTP Port 25 or 587 (You MIGHT be able to use 465, but may have to check with tech support first.)

If you’re hosting someplace other than Yahoo but trying to send email through your Yahoo email address, work with your hosting company to configure your DomainKeys and SPF settings to allow the emails to be accepted instead of being rejected as forged spam messages.

Google Mail / Gmail

Gmail / Google Apps Mail requires that your email communications occur over a secure channel, which means you need to send on port 465 or 587, and with SSL/TLS. The latest version of Zen Cart supports this by using the following settings in Admin->Configuration->Email Options:

• Email Transport: SMTPAUTH
• Email Linefeeds: CRLF
• SMTP Username: your gmail/google-apps-mail username
• SMTP Password: your gmail/google-apps-mail password
• SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com
• SMTP Port 465 or 587

More technical information is available in Google’s Help Center

You may have to have your host make some changes to your domain’s MX records if you are using Google hosted mail. Details for that are on Google’s help site.

You may also have to open your webserver’s firewall to allow access to Google’s servers and whatever port you’re using to communicate with them. Please contact Host 99 Support via Support Ticket to request this