My appointment confirmations / other emails are not arriving

General explanation of the e-mail system

Das weltweite E-Mail System darf man leider nicht als zuverlässig betrachten. Auf dem Weg zum Empfänger kann vieles passieren. Selbst wenn die E-Mail aus OptiOffice heraus erfolgreich versandt wurde, so bedeutet das noch lange nicht, dass sie den Empfänger zu 100% erreichen wird. OptiOffice schickt die E-Mail zuerst an den Server des Empfängers. Dieser prüft den Inhalt der E-Mail und eventuelle Anhänge – und dabei verfährt jeder Postfach-Anbieter etwas anders – und kategorisiert sie anhand mehrerer Faktoren. Dabei kann die Mail als SPAM markiert werden und entweder im Spam-Ordner des Empfängers landen oder SOFORT gelöscht werden, bevor sie den Empfänger irgendwie erreicht hätte. Alles nach dem Versand können wir leider zu 0% beeinflussen. Die vielen Spam-Versender auf der Welt zwingen die Provider leider zu diesem Vorgehen und verhindern somit auch unsere legitimen Mails zum Teil. Nochmals: Darauf haben wir leider keinerlei Einfluss.

We want to briefly describe the e-mail system to you. So what exactly happens when you send an email. There are 4 people involved in this endeavor:

1) Your email program (Outlook / Webmailer / OptiOffice / Handy-Mail-App / ...)
2) Your mailbox provider or its server
3) The recipient's mailbox provider or his server
4) As the recipient's email program

Individual steps of sending e-mail

• OptiOffice would like to send an email to a specific recipient. It connects to your mailbox provider via SMTP. The email is moved to its server and the server confirms the successful transfer to OptiOffice. From now on OptiOffice has nothing to do with it and cannot influence anything else !! That is very very important to understand. The problems only arise afterwards! Otherwise you would have received a message from OptiOffice that said incorrect SMTP data for your mailbox.

• Your mailbox provider checks whether you are allowed to send emails (you have not reached a sending limit and have not been reported as a spam sender) and tries to determine the server of the recipient's mailbox, which is clearly assigned based on the email address can be, e.g. Yahoo. Now the two servers connect. Both check certain rules again whether the exchange may be permitted.

• Your mailbox moves the email to the recipient's mailbox. This uses its spam filter (very, very strict recently) to check whether the content of the e-mail is spam. IF it is considered spam based on its internal rules, there are three options that each recipient mailbox provider handles differently:
1) The email is delivered and marked as spam
2) The email ends up in the spam folder of the recipient program
3) AND now it gets exciting: The email will be deleted! This email is nowhere and there is nothing you can do about it.

• The recipient opens his mail program and finds the e-mail in the 1) post 2) spam folder or 3) not at all.

TLDR: Yes, OptiOffice has successfully sent the email =)

SMTP server data

Please make sure that your email SMTP server data is correctly entered in OptiOffice.
If the data is not yet complete, fill it in with your data and click the (test) button. If your SMTP details are correct, you will receive a text email.

If your e-mails still do not reach your customers, it may be due to the spam filter of their e-mail provider. Attention: Some providers like GMX or WEB.de delete emails directly and do not put them in the SPAM folder at all! Unfortunately, that is beyond our control. Experience has shown that if customers add your email address to their address book, this increases your chances significantly.

If you need help with any of the tasks described in this section, it is best to contact your system administrator.

SPF-Eintrag hinterlegen

SPF (stands for Sender Policy Framework, i.e. “safe sender”) record in your domain, must be stored as an entry in your domain, i.e. your website. It basically serves to protect against SPAM. It is important to understand here that the SPF record ensures that your mails are not classified as SPAM by the recipient server. If you store the SPF entry, you ensure that the recipient server can check your mail whether you, as the sender, are SPAM or not. The mail header is checked to see whether the sender domain also matches the sender server.

Easily explained:
If you store the SPF record and write an email, the SPF record tells the recipient: "Hello, I'm not spam."

A TXT record with the following content must be created in the DNS settings of your mail provider:
„v=spf1 ip4:217.160.41.143 include:_spf-eu.ionos.com ~all“
The picture shows this using the example of 1&1/Ionos. With other providers, the interface may look slightly different.

Stichwörter: Emailversand funktioniert nicht, Postausgang, E-Mail-Ausgang, können nicht zugestellt werden, Outbox, Bestätigungsmail, unzustellbar