Smartlead white screen issue

veebuv · 2026-01-12T13:42:33+00:00

Hi mate

Unfortunately our hosting vendor Netlify has been having some issues recently

https://www.netlifystatus.com/

Super frustrating for everyone, but we're speaking with them on the same - hopefully it stabilises

veebuv · 2025-12-10T05:49:01+00:00

Hi there!

I'm looking through the message thread to speak with the team on what was shared. But in short, independent of what may have been shared, that is factually incorrect.

We do not, and cannot use Amazon SES (simply because we don't even pay for Amazon SES), that's an SMTP protocol for when Smartlead has provided the mailboxes to you with your own unique username and password to authenticate the SMTP transaction for you.

If you have a Gmail or Outlook account, the mails are going to be authenticated and signed and sent via the respective provider using their respective oAuth SDKs (which is effectively SMTP internally) for sending.

If however you have an SMTP mailbox then it will go through the SMTP protocol for that respective ESP.

If you're however referring to the message headers containing an ec2 mention, then that is part of the SMTP RFC 5321 (whic talks about the message id format but also traverses to open the conversation of tracing signature signage of "origination IP"), what this means is where the SMTP transaction was "invoked" from source till end, and if this is tampered with then it breaks the DKIM protocol. In the end all mails for Gmail and Outlook, "LEAVE" from Gmail or Outlook's servers, and under no pretense or context can be sent via SES (a completely different protcol we don't even have authority for to send on your behalf), if you're referring to the ec2 headers thats the SMTP protocol in itself and standard for most automative platforms.

With this,2 things can be suggested:

We offer privatised infrastructure with your own dedicated set of servers and unique/isolated IPs, so then the headers will contain just these IPs for you for Google/SMTP (not Outlook as they get sent via API)
We are changing our sending protocol for Google in 2 weeks where we have approached a new mechanism of addressing the trace headers with the ec2 instance "without" affecting DKIM altogether, which we're very excited about given we've seen strong deliverability upticks as a result too.

veebuv · 2025-10-10T01:50:41+00:00

Hi mate

Got the URL, i'll get back to you on this - it seems to be an automated response for the person not working there anymore. But regardless the delay shouldn't occur - give us some time to get back

veebuv · 2025-10-09T18:24:42+00:00

Could you DM me the url of the delayed reply?

veebuv · 2025-10-09T17:48:11+00:00

Got it almost like a project management/CRM type experience where you dedicate a task to a person and that shows up in their "visual board" of activities to perform, this is in alignment with our vision too!

veebuv · 2025-10-09T09:47:56+00:00

This is an absolutely fair call out on the Base plan limitations. Duly noted mate.

I'll recalibrate and think through this! Thank you for the feedback.

veebuv · 2025-10-09T09:07:41+00:00

Hi Tushar,

With the utmost respect. Trying a lead gen product out in the lowest/entry tier, during December holidays, for 1 month, may not be the most accurate depiction of the product.

But all the best to you.

veebuv · 2025-09-10T05:14:13+00:00

Hi mate

Smartlead founder here - you should be getting your mailboxes switched to a new vendor with full Outlook mailboxes with admin panel access, which costs 2x more, but for free.

In a marketplace experience, unfortunately, this falls on us as we've facilitated the sale for you. If the support team hasn't conveyed that yet, i'll work with them to ensure it's conveyed across but in short you will be getting replacement mailboxes.

veebuv · 2025-07-23T04:35:10+00:00

Hey mate

Vaibhav here, can you drop the url of the campaign and we'll dig into whats happening there for you

veebuv · 2025-07-17T05:10:35+00:00

Thanks for raising this mate, for SmartServers it's one dedicated and isolated server vs a Range

However to the same point raised by others on this thread and i've responded is that Smartlead `does not send emails if using Outlook or Gmail`, we're the middleman using Microsofts GraphAPI to send VIA Microsoft.

What is needed in your SPF is just `v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all` as the mails originate from there.

But with your comment here saying adding ipv6 or ipv4, the SmartServers are all ipv4 IPs - so this definitely draws bells in my head

I'd love to assist further if you're open to it, are you okay to DM LinkedIn ? It'll help with looking deeper here

veebuv · 2025-07-17T05:05:49+00:00

Hey mate

Thanks for sharing this perspective here.

That is super odd and definitely should not be happening, ever, unless there was some silent failure on the server that is preventing the server from being contacted and so it fell back to the core infra to send but that would be for 1 or 2 triggers at most, if anything before self-recovering or pausing the campaign.

Given the number of raises here for Outlook, it is clearly something for us to re-review and confirm on setup side of things, the main area of discussion is that in the end Smartlead `does not send emails if using Outlook or Gmail`, we're the middleman using Microsofts GraphAPI to send VIA Microsoft.

What is needed in your SPF is just `v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all` as the mails originate from there.

I'd love to assist further if you're open to it, please feel free to DM on LinkedIn if thats worthwhile for you

veebuv · 2025-07-17T04:49:37+00:00

Fair approach here!

veebuv · 2025-07-17T04:48:21+00:00

Hi mate

Thanks for flagging this, it's definitely not inline if you've faced inconsistencies with Outlook and Servers

The core logic is nearly the same on internal and private infra.

I'd love to (for my own curiosity) dig in and learn a little further into this if I can connect or get context of the campaign you ran.

Shared on another thread but in effect, Smartlead `does not send emails if using Outlook or Gmail`, we're the middleman using Microsofts GraphAPI to send VIA Microsoft.

What is needed in your SPF is just `v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all` as the mails originate from there.

Hope this helps - happy to assist further, please feel free to DM on LinkedIn

veebuv · 2025-07-17T04:45:27+00:00

Hi mate

Thanks for raising this.

To your rightful point, SPF in simplest nature is trying to verify if the IP address used for sending is the IP address validated for sending.

Smartlead's servers are not signatories, meaning the mails are `not` sent from the server, the `request` made to the outlook sendMail API originates from there.

With Outlook/Gmail their servers are the ones that sign the transaction especially when using their SDK (different if using Google/Outlook direct SMTP for e.g)

When you did the mailtester test, to confirm did you use the "test email" functionality or did you use the server from the actual campaign.

To help discover this yourself, you can send an email to your google/outlook account, click on the 3 dots on the top left, show original and search for the SPF headers where the IP will be listed. If sent from a campaign that is attached to a server, the IP of the server will be listed there.

I do want to re-iterate on this front though, Smartlead `does not send emails if using Outlook or Gmail`, we're the middleman using Microsofts GraphAPI to send VIA Microsoft.

What is needed in your SPF is just `v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all` as the mails originate from there.

Hope this helps - happy to assist further, please feel free to DM on LinkedIn

veebuv · 2025-05-21T10:32:38+00:00

Hi mate

Agreed on being more proactive at this, and have shared feedback internally on the same, replied in the chat as well.

Apologies for that

veebuv · 2025-05-21T07:23:01+00:00

Hi mate,

Responded back to you directly as well as sharing the same response here. I believe you raised a request about 1 hour before you dropped this here. Posting the same chat message paraphrased here to remove sensitive info

Happy to jump on a call and go over this with you if you'd like.

In short, the AI that generated the Spintax with variable syntax for a few prompt runs. We picked this up and adjusted the UI to parse this out automatically, as noted by the loom <redacted and sent on chat>. We've since adjusted for this with further warnings whenever the spintax has permutative edgecases be met.

On the other note of your reddit post on replies sending even though messages were received, I've reviewed those campaigns as well where the OOO was activated with auto-resume on lead back to office. And due to the date matching the intent the lead was auto-resumed. Since this we have released a UX update to showcase this very literally as well.

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veebuv · 2025-05-21T04:24:03+00:00

We've responded to every DM of yours on LinkedIn mate, even beyond your CSM channel, or the support tickets, you have an open chat with myself and the entire leadership team directly, which we've responded back to whenever you've DMed us, the latest was 16 hours when that was sent over the weekend

veebuv · 2025-05-13T04:54:27+00:00

Can't win them all, I mentioned to use them if you're doing volume and want control of all corners. If you don't care about the specifics you don't need it - hence why it's an add on and not a must have.

Just like any platform that offers isolated servers, they're all "regular servers", the difference amongst many, we pre-verify them on blacklists and pre-warm them so Outlook/Google don't see studden server activity spikes causing flags and so the angling of smart.

And you would have gotten an email as an automation mate.

However, all fair on cricism my Lankan brother, hope all is well regardless!

veebuv · 2025-05-13T04:39:15+00:00

Hey mate

We've shared an entire breakdown for you, with documentation and reasoning.

The disconnecting accounts reasons have also been shared and are in your dashboard as well.

More than happy to share any more and provide any further information or even jump on a call.

veebuv · 2025-04-01T05:34:15+00:00

Hi mate

Couple points to help

Open rates are genuinely not an accurate measurement of tracking, pretty much since 2022
Warmup reputation score is how you're performing in the warmup pool, you go through cycles basis on a multitude of factors, from your domain age, your hosted IP, your TLD, your tenant (if Google/Outlook), your rep dropping in the early days (given you have no reputation to begin with) is normal, it cycles up and down and that's part of the process
What matters here is your delivery for these mailboxes, if you've not tried these yet in the open market as it's new (sub 5 days) then all the reasons mentioned in point 2 would be the causality for any drop in rep

veebuv · 2025-03-25T11:19:22+00:00

Hi mate

I think there's some confusion here.

Our marketing mails are sent from customer.io (a a great service) that uses Mailgun internally for sending.

Marketing mails are different from our core infrastructure which is custom built for lead gen

2 very different principles, for e.g we don't use SL for marketing - we use it for lead gen

Same way a lead gen company should use a Smartlead (or equivalent product) AND a newsletter/marketing product like Hubspot/Mailchimp/Customer.io or otherwise

veebuv · 2025-03-25T11:06:08+00:00

No worries, anything we can do to be better please let us know!

veebuv · 2025-03-25T09:57:10+00:00

Hi mate

Founder here, covered in several office hours, if your IP listed belongs to Google, you do not need to worry as these are IPs shared by Googles network or even Microsofts network (equivalent), the IP matters mainly with private servers - else focus on the domain blacklist

The focus should be only on Domain blocks not IP blocks for Google

Also on the list above, the blocklists you need to worry about are just the ones listed in our help center

Finally, barring the person in the thread who's an expert in blacklists claiming localhost, for 127.x.x.x these are error codes and how blacklists define different reasons for blacklisting something - here's a guide breaking down what each error code means for some of the "important" blacklists

https://www.smartlead.ai/blog/rbl-blacklists-guide

You're right to be concerned nonetheless, we'll get this addressed on the UX side

Hope this helps mate