WP Mailster suddenly saying cannot authenticate

  • Resolved musicdurham

    (@musicdurham)


    3 years, 9 months ago

    I’ve been using WP Mailster quite happily for about three years and it has suddenly stopped working. I haven’t changed any settings and the plugin hasn’t been updated. When I test the connection, the error is Authentication failed. Cannot connect to IMAP server.
    Retrieve inbox status says Inbox not ok, check your settings.

    The server is accepting incoming messages to the mailing list but is not sending them on and they’re not showing in the WP Mailster queued emails. Messages are clearly arriving at the server and being accepted but WP Mailster can’t get to them.

    I’m using IMAP port 993, SSL.
    The mailbox is nowhere near full.
    I cannot stress enough – this was working fine until last week, nothing has been changed and now it isn’t working. I’ve tried all the other configuration options, I’ve deleted and reinstalled the plugin and I’ve tried rolling the site back to a version from when it worked. It still doesn’t work.

    Please help! Thanks

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author brandtoss

    (@brandtoss)

    Hi there.

    Since nothing within your site has changed, the question is what else might be changed?
    Here the webhoster is in question first and foremost.

    Situations like this come about typically because of either of two options:

    • Webhoster may have changed their policy in regards to outgoing connections (to mail servers). So maybe your connection gets blocked now. If so: ask them to allow it again.
    • The (email)hoster may simply have changed their server settings. Ask them, if their settings have changed.
    Thread Starter musicdurham

    (@musicdurham)

    Hi,
    Thanks for your response – you’ve helped me to pinpoint and solve the problem – I’m sharing the solution here as it may affect other users.

    The hosting company told me that the password being submitted by the plugin didn’t match the account password. I thought this was odd, as it was one of the things I’d already checked.
    But .. it turns out that the password for the email account had some brackets in it, and they weren’t on the list of special characters supported by the plugin. So I changed the password to remove those characters, and bingo it works again. Maybe something changed in the password requirements during a WordPress update?

    I’m so glad it’s working again, it’s a really useful plugin, and I was worried I’d have to find a different solution.

    Best wishes,
    Jane

    Plugin Author brandtoss

    (@brandtoss)

    Jane,

    thank you so much for sharing that here – really useful!

    We will learn from that and add a warning when unsupported special characters are entered. That will come in the next release so that hopefully other users must not go down the hard path as you had to.

    Again: thank you!

    Holger

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘WP Mailster suddenly saying cannot authenticate’ is closed to new replies.