<p>Solved!  </p><p>My IT right hand man assured me that port 465 was open but he was only thinking of the router.  It was being blocked by Windows firewall. </p>

I have been trying to get MercuryC to connect using SSL but can't get past "socket read timeout" failures.  I have confirmed the server and port settings with my domain host.  Any other suggestions?  Might the beta version help?

<p><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">As far as i know this error means no connection possible. Do you have checked your firewall settings?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">Another point could be that your partner silently changed port, ssl-access (starttls) or the format of the username (username@example.com instead of username).</span></p>

<p>Our Mercury C runs without problems with following settings:</p><p>Smart Host Name:        smtp.ionos.de          (smtp server of our ISP) </p><p>Port:                            587  /  SSL encryption via STARTTLS command</p><p>Announce myself as:    <i>domain.com</i>     (our internet doamin, used for our external e-mail addresses)</p><p>Forced SMTP sender:  <i> empty</i> </p><p>Login Username:          one of our ISP email account usernames (e-mail address)</p><p> </p><p>Except the general logging settings, the rest of the "credential settings for SMTP authentication" remain unchecked/disabled </p><p> </p>