Cannot connect to outgoing server to send mail

When attempting to send mail, your mail program may display an error message indicating that it cannot connect to the outgoing mail server, even though receiving mail from the same server works properly. This message may contain the error code 10061 or mention a socket timeout.

Firewalls and Internet security suites

Firewall software such as Norton Internet Security or McAfee Personal Firewall may be preventing you from sending email messages. Before continuing to troubleshoot your problem, please disable your Internet security suite and attempt to send the email again.

Port 25 blocking

What are ports?

Computers on the Internet can respond to many different types of requests for many different types of software applications. A corporate workgroup server, for example, may be running a website, receiving email, and sharing files over Windows networking. Ports are numeric codes like numbers on a mailbox that tell data being sent to a computer on a network which service should try to receive and interpret this data. When you browse to a web page, your computer sends data to port 80 on the web server you are requesting the website from, which the server understands is HTTP, the Internet protocol for the World Wide Web.

What is the 'port 25 block?'

When you send emails from your computer to a mail server, your computer attempts to make a data connection on port 25. Many Internet Service Providers, the companies such as AOL and Earthlink who provide Internet connections to businesses and individuals, block Internet traffic on port 25, so that you can receive incoming mail but not send outgoing mail. When this happens, you will receive an error message from your email program notifying you that it cannot connect to your outgoing mail server.

Why do Internet Service Providers block port 25?

Hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide are infected with virus or trojan horse programs which, completely invisible to the user, put their computers under the control of spammers who use infected computers and their Internet connections without their owners' knowledge or consent to send out tens of thousands of unsolicited commercial emails per day. Because of anti-spam blacklists which reject mail coming from computer networks regularly abused by spammers, it is a liability for ISPs not to block outgoing mail. If an Internet Service Provider is placed onto one of these blacklists, they may find that their customers are suddenly unable to send email to thousands of servers across the world.

These Internet Service Providers typically provide their own mail servers to be used for sending mail, and you should use these in the event that your ISP blocks access to Interkey.net's outgoing mail servers.

Sending mail from an ISP who blocks port 25

ISPs with opt-out agreements

The following ISPs provide opt-out agreements for customers which allow you to send mail using Interkey's email servers:

If you are having difficulty connecting to send mail, you may need to send outgoing email through your Internet Service Provider's mail server. Most Internet Service Providers will allow you to send mail with any address set as the From address, but some, like Verizon, may require you to enter your Verizon email address and use your Interkey address as a Reply-To. For your convenience, we have listed the email servers of many popular ISPs below:

List of outgoing mail servers

If your ISP is not listed in the above table, please contact them to determine how to send outgoing messages through your web host.

Interkey.net is currently moving towards a solution which will not require you to contact your Internet Service Provider.