Hello all, I have searched the many topics here as well as having referred to this thread: Email Troubleshooting however I seem to be STILL having email issues.
I’ve disabled Cloudflare for the moment to allow mail to come through but after having followed all of the advice in the above thread I have one question which I can’t find the answer to. Everything is set according to the above thread on my CF DNS, although there is a section in that thread which suggests created an ‘A’ record for ‘mail’ pointing to our service IP. However, I notice that there was a ‘CNAME’ pointing to ‘mail’ at our domain and trying to add the ‘A’ record failed because it claimed that record already existed. An ‘A’ record did not exist but I assume it’s clashing with the ‘CNAME’?. If so, would the ‘A’ record absolutely be required, and if so can I simply delete the ‘CAME’ record?.
We are on shared hosting and the website works OK when through Cloudflare, just the mail seems to stop outright, have made certain the proxy is bypassed for mail, etc, just http traffic so I’m a little confused why our mail just goes into the unknown.
We use a gmail account to import our mail via SSL, port 465 and works fine otherwise, I have even tried authenticating to the mail service via gmail using non SSL and other ports, absolutely nothing authenticates after going through Cloudflare.
Any pointers greatly appreciated.
Marko
Hi @markopolo,
Thank you for the detailed post and for letting us know what you have tried already.
Are you able to post a screenshot of your DNS records in Cloudflare (redacting IP addresses)?
Have you changed your nameservers back or just paused Cloudflare services on the site?
Do you have access to webmail through your email host that you can use for testing When that is working, we can then worry about why it is not importing into Gmail?
Screenshot enclosed, I have already removed the CNAME and added the A record, not sure if I should have done that, but can always put it back, and yes I’ve reverted our NS back for the moment, Cloudflare is still active.
As soon as I posted I realised I should likely have been trying to access the webmail via the site rather than gmail - duh me!! If everything looks ok with the DNS I’ll happily change the NS again and see what happens with the webmail 
Thanks for the reply, appreciated
Marko
That all looks OK to me and seems to match what is currently showing from your host now you have changed the nameservers back 
. 
also looks fine.
Sounds good.
Thanks again, changed the NS back to Cloudflare now, and webmail open, here’s hoping
Marko
May take a while for the change of nameservers to propagate
Yep, that’s cool, I’ll post back tomorrow hopefully once I know the site is routing through Cloudflare with an update.
Great, if it stops working again, rather than changing the nameservers back, can you pause Cloudflare on the site and see if it works then, which will help track down where the issue is?
You can pause Cloudflare from the Overview tab of the Cloudflare Dashboard, bottom right under Advanced Actions.
Will do
Think we’ve hit the snag again, just tried logging into my cPanel and timing out trying to connect to our domain:2083 - got through to our webmail via the site providers own route and I am expecting mail but none in the webmail at all. Similarly, and expectedly, nothing coming through via Gmail also. I’ve left Cloudflare active for now because the mails aren’t critical but just wondering where to look next.
As an afterthought, I’m wondering about the CNAME - www pointing to our domain which is proxied?
Also, looking at the analytics, it does appear little traffic is actually going through Cloudflare, but this may just be because the cache is playing catch up?
Cheers
Marko
Cloudflare does support port 2083 when proxied so that would normally work.
Can you send a test email from an account not on that domain to one you are having issues with and let us know if it comes through or if you receive a bounce reply / message?
Mail sent from a separate gmail account to our domain email, nothing at all in webmail and no bounce but I think it would take a little time to bounce, probably if remained undeliverable for 24 hours it would bounce then but I don’t think I could afford 24 hours without mail lol!!
OK, can you pause Cloudflare, give it a short while to propagate and send another test email and see if the result is the same?
You can pause Cloudflare from the Overview tab of the Cloudflare Dashboard, bottom right under Advanced Actions.
Will do
Just received the mail I sent and another one after about 8 minutes of Cloudflare being disabled, still waiting on a few more mails to come but these would have been sent a while ago so I wonder if they are on some kind of ‘hold’ and will come through eventually, sent another test mail from a seperate account and came through instantly, so I’m thinking there is some config issue on Cloudflare stopping mail coming through but you’re a better man than me if you can figure it out lol
NB, a refresh of our gmail just downloaded all the other mails I was expecting now too
OK, that’s really strange if you got the email you sent when Cloudflare was enabled, when you paused Cloudflare…
If it was a proxy issue, I would not expect the email to come through later unless it was your sending email re-trying to get it through.
Doing some tests and looking into this further…
Cheers, appreciate the support
Just been reviewing the info you provided earlier.
Seeing as your MX records point directly to Krystal and not to a subdomain of your domain name, those shouldn’t be affected by the proxy. Therefore, enabling Cloudflare should not affect incoming mail to your webmail. Are you able to contact Krystal to confirm with them that all is OK at their end and that there should be no issue when enabling Cloudflare?
I will continue checking through this to see if I can spot anything, ad maybe someone else here can help too.
No worries, I’ll fire a support ticket in with them to see if they can shed any light and get back to you as soon as I hear anything back from them.
Cheers
Marko
Well, the guys at Krystal (who are always quick off the mark) have explained it’s an issue with the “Spam Experts Routing” module on the cPanel, from what I understand we have an “A” record in that module to our domain, when we enable Cloudflare that means the domain.co.uk part for the mail is now trying to send/receive mail through the domain, rather than the IP, etc, so the solution was to update the record with the server hostname instead of our domain, kinda get it in regards to our doman being proxied etc,re-enabled Cloudflare last night and mail is coming through without any issues now, I was trying to reply last night once I noticed things working but because I’m a noob I’m restricted to ## replies per day.
All seems well so far, but thank you for all your help domjh, and possibly another thing for you techies to add to your ever growing list of solutions lol 
All the best
Marko