Before I step off the cliff in dealing with my email issues,,,

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have had an @roadrunner.com email for more than 20 years. The ISP for the roadrunner email servers has shifted around over the years and is now Spectrum, and has been for at least 5 years. My email client on both my Windows 10 desktop and Windows 8.1 Surface Pro (I know, I know, time to upgrade my Surface) is Thunderbird. On my phone, it is whatever email client Samsung bundles.

In the past 2-3 years, I’ve run into two problems.

  1. In 2019, I traveled to Italy. Once there, I discovered that while I could receive roadrunner emails, but could no longer send or reply, not from my Surface, not from my phone, and not from Roadrunner Webmail. I spent at least a couple of hours with tech support (in chat) and there was no resolution. The only suggestion that made any sense was to get a VPN. The claim made by Spectrum tech support was that all email from international IP addresses was blocked by policy.

  2. This year, my Thunderbird clients on both my Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 stopped being able to send outgoing emails. I could send/reply on my phone and through Webmail, so it was puzzling. I spent about an hour with tech support and only really found out one thing: Spectrum regards its duty to investigate email issues to end if Webmail works.

I did some research and it turns out that A) There is a lot of traffic on various sites like Reddit and Mozilla that reveals that this outgoing email problem is endemic with Spectrum across multiple SMTP clients and is probably due to Spectrum treating all residential account outgoing email as spam, B) There have been some recommendations on fiddling with the Port settings, but with spotty success, C) Some recommendations that seem to have succeeded were using SMTP2GO as an email service and bypassing the Spectrum servers for outgoing email.

So, right now I’m thinking of setting up and SMTP2GO account (free for up to 1,000 emails per month) to maybe solve both problems. Before I go down that road, I thought I’d pass it by experts on the SDMB.

My questions:

Is SMTP2GO a good potential solution to what appears to be a built in Spectrum problem?

Can I bypass the outgoing Spectrum roadrunner servers with SMTP2GO and still use the incoming servers to receive my roadrunner email?

Will the SMTP2GO solution work internationally without a VPN installed as well?

As an email naif (I just follow the instructions, I don’t understand the things I’m entering when I set up and email client) am I overlooking something that makes this solution hard or a non-starter?

2

I am certainly no email expert, but I can offer my opinions on this subject.

According to the SMTP2GO techie pages, this would be a viable solution.

This is exactly how SMTP2GO works. They don’t mess with your incoming mail, but they become your outgoing mail sender.

I think it would, but that would be a question for SMTP2GO tech support.

My question to you is: how much do you use email? Would you consider migrating to another provider like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook? I migrated from Cox email to Gmail several years ago and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Every time I received an email in my Cox inbox, I replied from my Gmail account, telling the sender of my new address. I had everything migrated in 6 or 8 weeks. You could add your new email account to Thunderbird and make it the default sending account, while receiving emails on both addresses.

3

Thanks!

I do have a gmail account that I use only for a few things. I don’t particularly like the gmail inbox (can’t sort on sender with a click, for example). I recently found out I can view gmail through a client like Thunderbird, so I might consider it, but I’m traveling in a couple of weeks and would like to have a working roadrunner account for that.

4

Then I would recommend going with the free SMTP2GO account. It might solve all your problems.

5

I do not think it will work. I do not think SMTP2GO is setup to work as the sender for third party email. From what I can tell, it is meant to be used as the sender for an email domain that you control.

The problem are some anti-spam features called SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Those basically work by telling other mail servers which mail servers are allowed to act on behalf of your domain. Spectrum is going to tell people that Spectrum servers are the only ones allowed to send Roadrunner email. If another server sees Roadrunner email coming from SMTP2GO, it will think it is spam. Based on their FAQ, it doesn’t look like SMTP2GO will even let you sign up until you have your SPF setup properly. You will not be able to make those changes on behalf of Roadrunner.

It looks like instructions for using the appropriate Spectrum servers are at Spectrum.net

If you have tried something on that page and it doesn’t work, or are having trouble implementing the instructions, then post the details.

To test before you leave, get a free or trial VPN account from one of the reliable places (sorry, I don’t have any good recommendations), and connect to a foreign server, and make sure you can send email while you are pretending to be in a foreign country.

6

Sorry for the length of this, but I am a nervous nellie and could use some reassurance.

So, the instructions on the linked web page from @echoreply are:

  • Username: Your full Spectrum-provided email address
  • Password: Your Spectrum-provided email password
  • SSL: On
  • Protocol: IMAP
  • Port: 993
  • Port: 587
  • Requires Authentication: Yes, or checked

And the closest I can come to Incoming Server and Outgoing Server are for the domain rr.com (note that my email address is @roadrunner.com, not rr.com)

What I currently have (and have had for years and years) is, in Thunderbird on my desktop (Account Settings):

Under Server Settings:
Server Type: POP Mail Server
Server Name: pop-server.roadrunner.com
User Name: First.Last (my email name that goes in front of @roadrunner.com, but not my full email, not spelled out here for obvious reasons)
Port: 110 (Default: 110)

Security Settings
Connection Security: None
Authentication Method: Password, transmitted insecurely

There are a bunch of other settings on checking email, storing email, etc., that I’m not going to list.

Then there is another Thunderbird Account Settings section on:

Outgoing Server (SMTP)
There is a list (going back maybe 25 years in domains) and the currently selected (and Default) server is: smtp-server.roadrunner.com

Details of selected server:
Description: <not specified>
Server Name: smtp-server.roadrunner.com
Port: 25
User Name: <not specified>
Authentication Method: No Authentication
Connection Security: None

If I look at the Edit window for this server, I can see that the Default port is 587 and I can add password and username authentication if I choose.

These settings have been undisturbed for about 20 years (or from about the Time Warner acquired roadrunner and made it there default email), so as someone who doesn’t understand this stuff, I’m wondering if I should make the leap:

I remember deciding at the time that POP (having the emails and storage of the emails on my computer) was the best way to go on what was then just a single desktop, no laptop, no phone.

  • Should I go with the IMAP on my desktop? Do I lose anything by changing to IMAP?

  • What should I do about the fact that Spectrum doesn’t list my current servers under either Incoming or Outgoing choices on the set up on their web page?

  • Will I lose my current inbox and archive of emails in Thunderbird (20+ years) if I set this new set up?

I realize these may be obvious questions, but as I said, I haven’t done anything more than follow the web instructions in setting up my emails on devices in the past (and the last time I did this was maybe about 5 years ago)

And I just thought to look at my phone, which still works like a champ for emails, both incoming and outgoing.

Looks like the user name is my full email address, the incoming server is pop-server.roadrunner.com, the security type is None, and the port is 110. The Outgoing server is mobile-smtp.roadrunner.com, Security Type is None, Port is 587, and authentication is required to send, using my full email address as the user name and my Spectrum password.

Can I just use my mobile settings across all my devices?

7

I’ve never used SMTP2GO, so I cannot speak definitively for this software. But they have instructions for setting up for gmail, exchange, and a host of other email providers.

Also, from their website:

There is no need to update your SPF record, and you do not need any additional MX records to use our service.

This website gives a pretty decent review of it:

It’s probably overkill for you. Might be worth a free trial, however.

8

Upon further review, @echoreply is correct. I tried to set up a free account using my Gmail address, and I got an error message. When I went to the chat window to ask why, this is what I was told:

Hi there, you need to sign up using an email address at a domain of your own - you can’t use free domains such as outlook.com, gmail.com etc.

So SMTP2GO will NOT work for the OP. Apologies for muddying the waters.

9

Thanks anyway. At least we’ve found out it doesn’t work. That’s a dead end avoided.

10

This is the setting giving you trouble. The port 25 setting is definitely incorrect, but probably only recently was fixed on their end to not work for you at all.

Yes, use the settings from your phone which are port 587 and the username and password. In this particular case, the desktop and mobile settings should be the same. (The server at the other end doesn’t care what kind of device is connecting, as long as it connects on port 587 and authenticates with your username and password.)

This will probably fix your foreign connection issue, but there is no way to know until you try it. You might be able to try with a VPN that gives you foreign endpoints.

(If you care, when you connect on port 25 you are acting as if you’re another mail server, trying to delivery email, when you connect on port 587 and authenticate, you’re a known user trying to send email (I know it is both simpler and more complex than that, but I’m already overly confusing things).)

11

The question which occurs to me is that since you are already using gmail if you can use the gmail smtp server for sending your thunderbird emails with your roadrunner return address.

Anyone know?

12

No, it is the same SPF and DKIM problem. The receiving side will see that google is trying to send a roadrunner address, and that google is not an approved sender of roadrunner messages, and will think the message is spam.

This is part of why spam was such a problem with email, anybody can send an email claiming it is from anybody else. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are attempts to solve this.

If the OP does want to migrate to gmail, then there is a convenient option available in gmail. Gmail can be set to pull messages, using POP, from another mail account. Once setup, Gmail will download messages from Roadrunner so they appear in Gmail. Replies will come from Gmail, which is probably desired if you are migrating.

Do not setup Gmail to POP messages from Roadrunner unless you disable your existing POP clients, or set all of them to leave messages on the server.

13

Thanks!

I think I’m going to start with getting my device settings harmonized and see how that goes. Once I’m back from my travel, I’ll start thinking about how to transition off roadrunner.