How many times have you been confronted with a cryptic error code when trying to do something simple on your computer like send an email? Has it ever been anything less than frustrating? A typical error message for me might be:
Your email could not be delivered error 552.
Who knows what this means! SMTP error codes were designed way back in 1982, mainly for other computers to be able to read and understand them. As it is perfectly understandable that human beings are less inclined to think and communicate in numbers, this guide was written to help you to decode SMTP error codes (and other reply codes) and work out exactly what is going on when you are trying to send emails.
When emails are sent from your computer a protocol called SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is used. Typically, SMTP works well, providing a means for people to communicate via email but sometimes, as with most things, problems do arise. Depending on the issue, you might receive an error message or error code identifying the problem. In this article, we wanted to address some of the SMTP error codes you might experience, and exactly what they mean.
First of all it should be...