ambimorph reports that email jobs have been failing for weeks, despite rebooting the server, which had previously resolved similar issues linked here. itsbhanusharma suggests checking the email provider, noting that Name.com (used for DNS and cPanel email) may not support bulk sending and could be rejecting mail or have misconfigured credentials. ambimorph suspects misconfigured DKIM/SPF settings from unlogged changes in September, but itsbhanusharma doubts this would cause Discourse email failures. ambimorph shares their SMTP config from app.yml, including special characters in the password (flagged in docs as potentially problematic), and notes inability to telnet to mail.well-actually.fyi on ports 465 or 2525, hinting at possible blocking. tobiaseigen advises testing the credentials in an external email client to isolate whether the issue lies with Discourse or the mail server itself. The root cause remains unresolved, with suspicion pointing to mail server connectivity or authentication issues rather than Discourse configuration.
At some point a few weeks ago email started failing. I haven’t had time to address it until now, and I’m at a bit of a loss.
There was a similar problem here: Error: "There are 965 email jobs that failed. Check your app.yml and ensure that the mail server settings are correct." that was solved by rebooting the server.
I tried rebooting the droplet, but that doesn’t seem to have helped. What else can I try?
There is a chance there is something wrong at your email service provider’s end. What service are you using for sending emails?
I suspect you might be right. I set up email through name.com; that’s who is hosting the DNS. I don’t see anything strange there, but I’m not sure what to look for.
Check the plan your on for your mail server. A client ran into this issue when they were exceeding the plan they were on
That doesn’t seem to be it, but good suggestion!
I don’t think name.com offers an email server for bulk sending. But this issue is most certainly related to your mail server either refusing the mails or your host server having wrong email credentials (which is unlikely if the same credentials worked before.)
Name.com offers email through cPanel.
I think I must have screwed it up when I made some configuration changes at the end of September which I didn’t precisely log 
. Currently can’t telnet to the server.
I rebuilt with ./discourse-setup which didn’t help, and I’m just not seeing anything odd on the cPanel or Name.com side. I wonder if I screwed up the DKIM/SPF incantation. I’m going to look there next.
This shouldn’t be causing email jobs to fail in discourse.
It didn’t help.
I had to set this aside for a few weeks and just came back to it today. I’m really stuck!
This is everything SMTP in my app.yaml:
DISCOURSE_SMTP_ADDRESS: mail.well-actually.fyi
DISCOURSE_SMTP_PORT: 465
DISCOURSE_SMTP_USER_NAME: amber@well-actually.fyi
DISCOURSE_SMTP_ENABLE_START_TLS: false # (optional, default true)
DISCOURSE_SMTP_FORCE_TLS: true
DISCOURSE_SMTP_DOMAIN: forum.well-actually.fyi
Also the password has special characters in it, which the Troubleshoot docs mention could be an issue.
Does any of this look wrong to you?
Actually, I cannot telnet in to mail.well-actually.fyi on port 465 or 2525, so maybe I’m blocked.
Try putting those credentials into an email program and see if it works. If it does not, the problem is not with discourse.