Gmail not picking up server emails after change to Cloudfare but webmail working

[user14918]

Hi. I am very new to Cloudfare and have an issue now with sending and receiving emails through Gmail, which usually fetches and sends email from the host server. I am still able to use mail directly through webmail though. I have checked similar threads but couldn’t quite get it. I notice there is an A for webmail but a CNAME for mail in DNS settings. I cannot add an A for mail while a CNAME is there for mail. If someone could lead me in the right direction, that would be wonderful.

[fritex]

I see CNAME mail is pointed to joytalk.biz, but may I ask is A joytalk.biz or (DNS-only)?

@user14918

I cannot add an A for mail while a CNAME is there for mail

Yes, you cannot add A mail as there is already CNAME mail.
To do so and make it work, please follow bellow steps:

1. Kindly, first remove CNAME mail record
2. Remove CNAME www record
3. Add A www record and point it to your server IP, make sure it’s cloud
4. Add A mail record and point it to your server IP, make sure this is (DNS-only)
5. Re-check and make sure you are using mail.joytalk.biz for your incoming and outgoing (POP/IMAP/SMTP) server in your e-mail client (MS Outlook, Mozilla thunderbird, etc.)

May I suggest checking below article if your e-mail records (usually the A mail and the MX record) are configured properly while you are using Cloudflare for your domain name:

• Email undeliverable when using Cloudflare

Deprecated - Email Troubleshooting

This tutorial is deprecated in favour of Troubleshooting email issues · Cloudflare DNS docs

Archive

This tutorial covers the steps you should take if, when you change your domain to point to Cloudflare, you no longer receive emails to your domain. If you follow this tutorial and still need further help, please let us know what you have tried and share your domain name and, if possible, a redacted screenshot of your DNS records in Cloudflare. <a href="https://youtu.be/hLKyUWQcu08">…

I would also recommend looking into the below article due to further prevention of your e-mails being marked as a SPAM at the recipient’s side:

How to prevent your emails from going to spam

As a website admin, you will likely be sending out emails to your customers or visitors for newsletters, account notifications, product updates, etc. Depending on the circumstances, you might start noticing your emails are ending up in customers’ spam/junk folders instead of their email inbox. This issue can be caused by a few things, and I’ll go into detail for each: Misconfigured DNS/absence of necessary records Poor domain reputation FAQ Misconfigured DNS/absence of necessary records For…

Nevertheless, using online tools on the links below you could test and troubleshoot more what is going on with your e-mails:

Newsletters spam test by mail-tester.com

Email server

Sharing here a list of websites/tools I usually use to check, test or even generate something in case I forgot how does it go: https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/dig/ https://ssl-tools.net/ https://ssl-tools.net/mailservers https://ssl-tools.net/mails https://www.checktls.com/TestReceiver https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://en.internet.nl/test-mail/ https://intodns.com/ https://powerdmarc.com/power-dmarc-toolbox/ https://www.immuniweb.com/ssl/ Hope they will help you too

Furthermore, www.test with might not going to work as far as you could have the issue with it as written in below article:

Deprecated - Subdomain too deep

This tutorial is deprecated in favour of Fix VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH · Cloudflare SSL/TLS docs

Archive

This tutorial covers a possible reason for the SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP and ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH errors (Firefox and Chrome respectively) when seen on a subdomain. The Cloudflare universal certificates cover example.com and *.example.com. This means that it covers any subdomain one level below the domain you signed up with. It will cover www.example.com and subdomain.exampl…

[user14918]

Thank you for your very quick response!
A joytalk.biz is proxied at the moment.

[user14918]

I will try the list you have suggested, but should I worry about the website working properly or not if I remove the CNAME for www?

[sdayman]

@user14918

A joytalk.biz is proxied at the moment.

That’s the problem. I recommend that you replace that CNAME record “mail” with an “A” record that has the IP address of your joytalk.biz entry. And make sure it’s DNS Only also.

[user14918]

Thank you very much for your replies. I removed the CNAME for mail and added an A record with the IP address and I changed the joytalk.biz A record to DNS only. However, it still wasn’t working. I had not changed any mail settings and was receiving and sending just fine previously, but noticed in the MX record that the mail server should actually have been just joytalk.biz instead of mail.joytalk.biz. I tried that change and it is working fine now. Not sure why that happened but all seems well. Thank you once again. I really appreciate it.

[sdayman]

Your website loads as both ‘www’ and without the ‘www’. Which one is going to be your main (canonical) one?

MX really should point to a ‘mail’ subdomain. Then your joytalk.biz can be properly configured as Proxied.