: How long should email take to deliver? I'm experiencing significant problems with the time it's taking to deliver signup emails. The signup process requires the user to verify their email address

@XinRu657

Posted in: #Email

I'm experiencing significant problems with the time it's taking to deliver signup emails. The signup process requires the user to verify their email address before they can use the site (it's financial services). However, I am finding that the signup emails are taking a long time to deliver. I'd not been measuring them, but last week, one took 53mins.

So, I've written some code to send emails to test accounts and then login to the imap servers to check when they arrive. The results were surprising.

Out of about 60 mails send over the last 30 hours (1 each hour to two destination addresses), 9 took more than 10 seconds, 6 took more than a minute (i.e. 10%).

+----+-------------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+
| id | sender | receiver | sent | received | time |
+----+-------------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+
| 31 | <redacted> | btinternet.com | 2015-06-28 16:15:01 | 2015-06-28 16:16:36 | 95 |
| 33 | <redacted> | gmail.com | 2015-06-28 17:15:01 | 2015-06-28 17:21:35 | 393 |
| 49 | <redacted> | btinternet.com | 2015-06-29 01:15:01 | 2015-06-29 01:19:09 | 248 |
| 60 | <redacted> | gmail.com | 2015-06-29 07:15:02 | 2015-06-29 07:18:02 | 180 |
| 67 | <redacted> | btinternet.com | 2015-06-29 11:15:01 | 2015-06-29 11:15:14 | 12 |
| 69 | <redacted> | btinternet.com | 2015-06-29 13:15:01 | 2015-06-29 13:15:15 | 13 |
| 70 | <redacted> | gmail.com | 2015-06-29 13:15:01 | 2015-06-29 13:15:25 | 23 |
| 76 | <redacted> | gmail.com | 2015-06-29 17:15:02 | 2015-06-29 17:16:55 | 113 |
+----+-------------+----------------+---------------------+---------------------+------+


Is this normal? What tactics do website developers use to deal with this sort of problem? Do I need to completely re-architect the user sign on process?

UPDATE

So here is the header from two of the mails (entry 49 and 33 in the table) and also the 53minute one. Running them through toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/messageheader/analyzeheader puts the blame at the handover point from the remailer/smtp provider to gmail/btinternet - i.e. difficult to say who is responsible. I've also removed entry 78 as that looks to have been a server issue at my end - I should possibly update the code to download the messages and check the headers too... but really I just want this to all to just work without delays.

Entry 49 header:

From noreply@mycompany.com Mon Jun 29 01:15:02 2015
X-Apparently-To: someone@btinternet.com; Mon, 29 Jun 2015 01:19:04 +0000
Return-Path: <bounce-md_30227788.55909c16.v1-23f454369b374fe2aef0d80ce6364ab9@mandrillapp.com>
Received-SPF: neutral (65.20.0.12 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of mandrillapp.com)
X-YMailISG: J0ShZ4sWLDvICB6llYYfaaallq.RgZj2clqpD9Ae_l0rDuLz
zL98Iz9m7BzvCHQtdaJw0SGa3pMO84r5ksFrUp2ZNU_raBEZo_BSmVPF2W.i
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X-Originating-IP: [65.20.0.12]
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by mta1052.bt.mail.ir2.yahoo.com with SMTP; Mon, 29 Jun 2015 01:19:04 +0000
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From: <noreply@mycompany.com>
Subject: Test Email Delivery Time 48
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To: <someone@btinternet.com>
Message-Id: <E1Z9Nf3-0008Rm-Pr@sully>
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Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2015 01:15:02 +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 10


And the entry 33 header:

Delivered-To: someone@gmail.com
Received: by 10.27.85.232 with SMTP id l101csp1085170wli;
Sun, 28 Jun 2015 10:21:30 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.170.150.7 with SMTP id r7mr14269483ykc.48.1435512089846;
Sun, 28 Jun 2015 10:21:29 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <bounce-md_30227788.55902b96.v1-110a60e49eb840e6bc3f42a6c6a34d2d@mandrillapp.com>
Received: from mail135-23.atl141.mandrillapp.com (mail135-23.atl141.mandrillapp.com. [198.2.135.23])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id g63si17330189ywd.182.2015.06.28.10.21.29
for <someone@gmail.com>
(version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);
Sun, 28 Jun 2015 10:21:29 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of bounce-md_30227788.55902b96.v1-110a60e49eb840e6bc3f42a6c6a34d2d@mandrillapp.com designates 198.2.135.23 as permitted sender) client-ip=198.2.135.23;
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iJRW9TlCUQ05Jsag3HWn0H471Tx6w=
From: <noreply@mycompany.com>
Subject: Test Email Delivery Time 32
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Body text


And the 53 minute one...

Delivered-To: someone@gmail.com
Received: by 10.27.85.232 with SMTP id l101csp604598wli;
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 07:56:08 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.13.241.132 with SMTP id a126mr58052631ywf.72.1435244168411;
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 07:56:08 -0700 (PDT)
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for <someone@gmail.com>
(version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128);
Thu, 25 Jun 2015 07:56:08 -0700 (PDT)
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kG+4hZvbHuofoYlAeIpBUau+AJ9g0=
From: <welcome@mycompany.com>
Subject: Welcome
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X-Php-Originating-Script: 33:misc.php
To: <someone@gmail.com>
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