NEED ADVICE: phpmailer / mandrill / server blacklisted

Question

okay, so, here's the sitch...

i've got a website that utilizes phpmailer to send form submissions to email via Mandrill.

please understand that this has been working perfectly for many months, and NOTHING about our code has changed!

i discovered a few weeks ago that the emails had stopped coming thru. after some investigation, i discovered that every email sent to the email address that phpmailer/mandrill sends the form submissions to, bounces back... no mater what.

so after some time communicating with our server admin, i found out that a few weeks ago, a different account on the server was compromised & used to send out a bunch of spam; and thus the server IP address was put on several of the big internet blacklist lists.

the server admin has fixed the vulnerability in that other account and is attempting to get the server UNblacklisted - but that process is taking FOREVER!

unfortunately, due to finances & other circumstances, i do not have the option of moving our website to a different server at this time.

what i'm confused about is...

1. since our website & the phpmailer script is using a Mandrill account, and mandrill smtp settings, then why wouldn't the emails be able to hit the Mandrill server to be sent out?
2. in looking at the Mandrill logs AND after consulting a Mandrill tek support person, phpmailer submissions are not even reaching Mandrill anymore, as they used to. so how does that process really work (in simply laymen's terms please)?

so my question is...

1. so just because the site & phpmailer script reside/hosted on a server whos ip address is email blacklisted, that means ANY submissions being sent out from that will be blocked? even tho we are not using the email services from this server?
2. is there a workaround to this situation to be able to get these emails to go thru whilst remaining on this server?

if anybody could throw some advice/thoughts/tips/tricks my in simple layman's terms, i'd really appreciate it.

THANKS!

Answer 1

Your problem is probably that because you are on an IP blacklist the mail that you are sending Mandril is never getting to them.

If I were you, I would look into the REST mandril API. They probably have a php client, and I remember a lot of examples on their website.

EDIT:

Here is a simplified diagram of how to message is sent

Your server ---> Mandrill ---> End recipient
             ^ 
             |
       In all the arrows, including this one, the message is transmitted through email.

Your code is just sending an email to Mandrill with special additional content that tell Manrill to forward the message to its final recipient, so it would be subject to similar blocking.

Answer 2

The problem is that your blacklisted, and Mandrill won't want to send email for what they consider to be spammers.

As far as I can see, you have 2 options.

The first, obvious solution is to get yourself removed from all the blacklists that you can. In my experience this has usually taken less than 24 hours, but that was also years ago so could be longer.

Alternatively instead of changing servers, you could ask your hosting company if you can simply get a new IP address, as they'll likely have a pool of them to work with.

Answer 3

The solution is: Fix the vulnerability (which you did), set up SPF and DKIM for the domain (which your admin probably did already), then request to get yourself off the blacklists. After that it will work.

You can use http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx to check which blacklist(s) an IP is on, then email the list to request removal. It still takes less than 48 hours to get removed from blacklists in most cases, if you use the proper communication channel to get ahold of them. Obviously you can't email them via your blacklisted IP (since they will block the request).