Okay, I did restrict the relaying stuff now, I did find some of the blacklists' homepages and I did do some of the removing of my domain from their lists, but some of them wanted me to pay them for being "whitelisted" permanently, which is not what I would expect a technology, an idea like the internet to be like (I bought my domain didn't I...), but that's a different issue.

There's a way bigger issue for me now, which is that Strato does something in their system that prevents me from being contacted by other mail servers, as strato told me in an answer to my email (dyndns is the problem i guess...). So I'm probably gonna be happy with SENDing mails for now till I get a static IP. Thanks for all the help!!

I recently bought a domain from Strato (a German webhoster) and I need email functionality. Natively it gives me the possibility to add and manage ONE email address in their online customer platform. Is it possible to use my own mail server (Mercury) and as a result of that do whatever I want with the domain? The reasons why I wish to do so are that 1) their online platform sucks in my opinion and I don't wanna deal with it and 2) Maybe using Mercury I could have more than one email address??? 

I should say I'm forced to use dyndns for the domain since I don't have a static IP.

Thanks for any help :)

Assuming that your Internet provider allows email traffic on port 25 (SMTP) it should be OK. If they block outgoing traffic it can still work if you use MercuryC to relay messages through their SMTP server.

You can set up as many email accounts as you need in Mercury.

/Rolf 

Sounds awesome! Thanks. I'll come back when I know more ;-)

There I am again... The SMTP client (end to end) prints errors and mails don't go out (from my domain to the world). It is telling me that it is getting a connection error after resolving the MX for the receiving address. It does have the right MX though, I double checked. It can send to another address within the domain.

If you need any logs to tell more, please tell me, I'm new to everything email related.

[quote user="yorrd"]

There I am again... The SMTP client (end to end) prints errors and mails don't go out (from my domain to the world). It is telling me that it is getting a connection error after resolving the MX for the receiving address. It does have the right MX though, I double checked. It can send to another address within the domain.

If you need any logs to tell more, please tell me, I'm new to everything email related.

[/quote]

Try using MercuryC as Rolf suggested to relay through your provider's server.  There are a number of reason why end-to-end may not be working - dynamic address, no reverse ip, on a DNSBL list etc.

Okay, I'm not quite sure where to get the credentials for the strato smtp relay thingy from, if I leave it empty, it comes back with an error and a message from strato saying that I should configure my email software for authentification (whatever that means). I sent the mail from within mercury to a @web.de address (a free German mail service comparable to gmail)

EDIT: tried the credentials of the only email address I was allowed to create on their web interface and it didn't complain, no errors anymore, but the mail hasn't arrived yet. I'll keep you updated

YAY it arrived!!! Thanks to everyone who posted here, good thing the community has you!

I'm having another problem though now, no mail is coming in. Do I have to set up something similar to the relay smtp for the incoming stuff? The mercury live logs (on the GUI) don't tell me anything, so I guess it doesn't even arrive at the server.

Start with checking DNS records. If they are OK it could be that your router or firewall is stopping incoming SMTP traffic. Make sure that port 25 is forwarded to the Mercury server.

/Rolf 

Sorry for that question ;-) but how do I check my DNS record? I seem to be too stupid to find information about how to do it. I'm pretty sure it's not my firewall, I just turned it off and nothing changed. The router is set up correctly.

Try pinging your server by DNS name and see if it resolves to your current IP address. If it doesn't you may need to modify DNS settings for the domain.

/Rolf 

Additionally, this is a useful tool for checking email settings for a domain:

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/

/Rolf  

Okay, the DNS seems to be fine, however, mxtools tells me that I'm on 3 blacklists. If that affects the mail server, is there any way to get off those lists?

Secondly, doing a MX lookup, it writes about mailin.rzone.de (the IP is different than my external IP) but I'm guessing that's right the way it is?

Then, smtp:mydomain.de gives me two errors / warnings: Warning - Reverse DNS does not match SMTP Banner   and   error: May be an open relay.

I hope I looked up the right stuff? Thanks!

If the server is an open relay you will be permanently blacklisted, so fix that first. Make sure that under MercuryS configuration / Connection control "Use strict local relaying restrictions" is checked, and consider checking "Only Authenticated SMTP connections may relay mail". Please check Mercury help for details - it's critically important to understand this when running a mail server. The default setting is to not allow relaying.

To get unlisted from a blacklist there is usually some tool on the home page for that blacklist.

If mailin.rzone.de isn't your server there is a DNS problem for the domain that has to be taken care of.

There is little you can do about the reverse DNS unless you have a fixed IP address, though. A few servers may reject mail because of that, but a matching reverse DNS is not a requirement so in most cases it will work.

/Rolf