Knowledge Base

Mail to external mail service is delivered locally on Plesk server

Symptoms

Attempts to send a message from the Plesk server to a mailbox on example.com fails with one of the errors below:

# tail -f /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog | grep 'unknown in virtual mailbox'
550 5.1.1 [email protected]: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual mailbox table; [email protected] [email protected]

example.com postfix-local[23040]: cannot chdir to mailname dir contact: No such file or directory
example.com postfix-local[23040]: Unknown user: [email protected]

ME-E0103: [1076] Local Delivery: Failure - Domain for ([SMTP:[email protected]]) is locally serviced, but recipient is not defined in address map.
In webmail, the following error might occur:

Could not send message to SMTP server. Check you have access to send messages via the server and that all To/CC/BCC addresses are valid
Error: SMTP Server rejected email. Returned:550 sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.7.17)

Error SMTP (500): The following recipient could not be reached "[email protected]" (sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.7.17)).

There was an error sending your message: Message could not be delivered - the address was not found, is unknown, or is not receiving messages.

550 5.1.1 [email protected] ... User unknown (in reply to MAIL FROM command))

Cause

The domain example.com is hosted on the Plesk server but the mail for the domain is hosted on an external mail server/service.
Mail server treats example.com as a local domain and tries to send emails locally.

Resolution

Note: In some cases, the mail service is necessary locally and externally.
Vote the UserVoice request as top-voted suggestions are likely to be implemented in future Plesk updates.

Windows

Disable the mail service per domain or subscription:

Log in to Plesk
Go to Domains > example.com > Mail Settings and uncheck Activate mail service on this domain and click OK.

Or disable mail service at the subscription level going to Subscriptions > example.com > Mail tab > Mail Settings tab > Select domains from the subscription > Click on Activate/Deactivate Services.

To disable the mail service on the subscription using command-line utility (run this on the server via CMD):

C:> plesk bin mail --off example.com

Linux

Disable the mail service per domain or subscription:

Log in to Plesk
Go to Domains > example.com > Mail Settings and uncheck Activate mail service on this domain and click OK.

Or disable mail service at the subscription level going to Subscriptions > example.com > Mail tab > Mail Settings tab > Select domains from the subscription > Click on Activate/Deactivate Services.

Mail service on the subscription can also be disabled using the mail utility:

# plesk bin mail --off example.com

To disable the mail service for every subscription on the server, use the following command:

# plesk bin subscription --list | while read i; do plesk bin mail --off $i && echo "Mail service for $i subscription has been disabled" ;done