Monthly Archives: November 2011

Our Email Header Analyzer has been around for a few years but we have recently polished it to include a few more cool features. Email Headers can be a real challenge to decipher which is why we developed this tool in the first place. In simple terms, it makes email headers as readable as the newspaper. Email headers are present on every email you receive via the Internet and can provide valuable diagnostic information like mail server delays, anti-spam results and more.

So lets try out the tool and some of its new features. Simply grab some email headers (not sure how to get email headers?) and paste them into our tool here. To view the example below in a live format on our site, go here.

Sharing – We have added sharing tools at the top of the page. Share with your IT Administrator, Support Department or Vendor to help with the troubleshooting process.

Time Stamps – Visual graph that quickly shows the amount of time the message took at each server/hop. This view can help you see if if/where there was a delay at any of the servers.
Server Hops – A more detailed look at the servers that touched the message, also includes delays in this format if applicable.
Parsed Headers – Email Headers can be very confusing to read, so this part of the tool parses out the valuable information like Sender, Recipient, Date, Time, Subject of the message etc.
Original Headers – Sometimes you need to refer back to the raw email header so we have put that information at the bottom.

Our website and its tools are constantly evolving and we would love to hear your feedback! Please let us know if you think something can be improved etc. Hit us back at feedback@mxtoolbox.com.

If you are concerned about mail delays or other performance issues with your server we would highly recommend trying our Premium MailFlow Monitoring. This service sends a message through your server and back to our datacenter. This unique method allows us to provide complete mail flow visibility on your server. This can help uncover issues that might be creating delays as well as detecting both inbound or outbound mailflow failures. In addition to alerts for failure, you can login to see daily, weekly and/or monthly historical statistics. This method allows you to get a true picture of the performance of your mail server.

Additional Resources
How to Get Email Headers
MailFlow Monitoring

November Newsletter – Third Time is the Charm! Welcome to the Third Edition of our Top Holiday Email Related Tools

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At MxToolBox, we use many email tools on a daily basis and sometimes we forget to share the wealth. We asked everyone in the office to give us their favorite Email related tool. We’ve done this for two years now, so you may want to check out the 2009 & 2010 results as well. Here’s the list!

Keep in mind that this list is not in any particular order but is just a sampling of our favorites. If you have any tools in mind that we missed, please let us know!

Mailflow Monitoring – Last year we recommended our Server Monitoring to help take the guessing out of server management. Earlier this year we released our Mailflow monitoring which is design to test your server end-to-end to detect problems that most monitoring services miss. We understand that even short email delays can be costly for your business. Our solution provides complete mail flow visibility by detecting issues with inbound or outbound mailflow.
Send Test Email– This tool is from Wormly and is pretty cool. All you have to do is enter your SMTP server and then a sender and recipient. Then just hit the button and it shows you the SMTP conversation.
Traceroute– We’ve had this one on our list for a couple of years now. This year, we’ve found a new tool that does all the work for you! Traceroute tracks the path that a packet takes from your computer to a destination address. A traceroute also shows how many times your packets are being rebroadcast by other servers until it gets to the final destination.
DNS Check – This tool can help troubleshoot potential problems with your domain, web and DNS. It checks each step in the chain that links hostname to IP address. If it finds a problem, it flags for attention.
Sender Score – This tool is a free email reputation service that can give an indication of the trustworthiness of an email source. The list is complied by Return Path and may help you pinpoint if you have a sender reputation problem.
Quick Zone Check – Performs a series of checks on your name servers and email servers. Returns WHOis, MX, Name Server and more info all in one place.
Blacklist Monitoring & Delisting Support – The MxToolBox Blacklist Tool checks your IP against a list of over 150 Real Time Blacklists. We also now offer Blacklist monitoring and Delisting Support.

Last but not least, we would like to include three of our own Free Tools which help make troubleshooting, diagnosing, and monitoring your email easier. We have been providing our free tools since 2003 and we are proud to continue giving back to the email community.
Blacklist Lookup– The MxToolBox Blacklist Tool checks your IP against a list of over 150 Real Time Blacklists. If your mail server has been blacklisted, some email you send may not be delivered.
ping@mxtoolbox.com – MxToolBox Ping is one of the Free Tools provided by MxToolBox to help you determine if Inbound and Outbound mail flow is working. Simply send an email from your network to ping@mxtoolbox.com and the tool will look at the email headers of your message and send you a notification back immediately. Please note that the subject and body do not matter. The response email will include several helpful troubleshooting tools including your Outbound IP, server hops, any transaction times or delays and it can help trace the route your email is taking to discover any outbound gateways you might be using.
MxToolBox Free Tools – We mentioned this tool last year but once again we have made some updates! All the familiar tools you are using on a daily basis are still there but we have added Ping, Trace, SOA, TCP, HTTP and HTTPS. These have also been added to our Server Monitoring so you can monitor those commands as well.