I am trying to send mail from a local iis app using localhost as my smtp server after installing free smtp but I am getting the following error:
Mailbox unavailable. The server response was: Invalid recipient: 'validAddress'@hotmail.com
Any idea what the problem could be?
it sounds like your free (3rd party) smtp app is not leaving your network and might be trying to see if it has that mailbox itself. Try and see if there is a setting to allow the smtp server to access external connections, etc. What is the name of the free smtp app, btw?
Alternatively, can u use the built in SMTP mail provider, built into iis? do you know how to use that, instead of this 3rd party app.
Use Wireshark to see what comes on the wire between your application and the SMTP server.
It looks more like the SMTP service needs to be configured to "Relay" email... Usually this involves telling it what YOUR mail domain is, and then any mail destin for a domain other than it's own will cause it to go out to the world, and try to relay the message to the real server.
But, be careful! This is how spammers exploit email servers. They look for SMTP listeners that will relay for them. You want to make sure yours will only accept relay mail from "localhost", or whatever machine will be connecting to it to do the sending.
A more secure way is to block port 25 inbound at your firewall to this box, so this SMTP server is not visible to the outside world.