Email Problems - Causes and Solution

I can safely assume that you already know how email works. The main problem occurs when it does not work. It doesn’t matter if you run your business or you are a simple contractor - if your email does not work, you lose information. Most enterprises have at least one e-mail shutdown during the year, and, in many cases, these are losses, which, given the restoration of normal mail operation, can amount to hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

But what leads to email outages?
There are many reasons why the e-mail system may stop working, but first we’ll dwell on the fact that the downtime of the e-mail can be planned and unplanned.

Scheduled outages are when your email system is down for maintenance or upgrades. Patch management, physically moving servers, or shutting down a system for testing can also be placed in this category.

Unlike scheduled email outages, unplanned outages can take you by surprise. They are also much more difficult to accurately diagnose. When such a problem arises, its causes can range from hardware or software problems to a hacker attack, or a human error that can cause the system to malfunction. Natural phenomena and various accidents should also not be neglected.

A recent survey showed that about 70% of unplanned outages are caused by hardware or software problems, such as server failures, disconnection, and database corruption.

That is why it is so important to know the status of your mail system around the clock. The best way is to consistently monitor your email with a test letter round-trip 2-step session, which ensures that both your inbound and outbound email services work properly round-trip.
This type of monitoring usually takes place in the following scenario:
The monitoring mail agent will connect to the outgoing (SMTP) mail server, send a test message, and then it will connect and log in to your incoming (POP3 or IMAP) server and try to receive the message. If the message is received, then the check was successful, and the message will be deleted from the mail system. If the message cannot be received, the test will be declared invalid and notifications will be sent to the indicated contacts.
Of course, there are other possible scenarios, but we will get to know them more closely in our next posts.

In this case, your e-mail is constantly monitored, which reduces the downtime of your e-mail system by almost 80% (compared to systems without monitoring and error notification services). It also significantly reduces troubleshooting time for email applications and, therefore, minimizes the cost of restoring their health. In addition, the risk of loss or delay of valuable e-mail messages is eliminated, which undoubtedly has a positive effect when communicating with your customers and partners.