KnowledgeBase Articles » Deferred Messages

Thursday, November 22, 2012, 14:56

Deferred Messages

Category: Troubleshooting

Solution ID: 00000177

Summary:

On my PerfectMail server I see messages marked as "deferred" in the mail queue. What does "deferred" mean and why does mail get "deferred"?

Answer:

E-mail deferral occurs when a message (usually outgoing) cannot be immediately handed off to the next relay host. It is quite common to have messages queued as "deferred" as remote mail servers may not be available for any number of reasons: network traffic congestion, service outages, server load, DNS hiccups, grey-listing, etc.

Sometimes spam and delivery notification messages will get stuck in the queue as well. Spammers send a lot of e-mail, but rarely accept return e-mail, including bounce messages. These messages can get stuck in the queue. PerfectMail™ has automated processes that clean out such messages on an hourly basis.

Tags: email, delivery, mail, queue, deferred, stuck

Link to this article: https://perfectmail.com/kb/deferred_email_messages

Updated: Thursday, November 22, 2012, 14:56

-- David Rutherford