All systems are operational
Maintenance
Scheduled network maintenance for opal3 and opal8

On 20 August 2026 between 11:00am and 4:00pm PDT (UTC-7) our data center team will be upgrading the racks that host the following servers:

  • opal3.opalstack.com
  • opal8.opalstack.com

During the 5-hour maintenance window, network connectivity to the affected servers will be interrupted for up to 1 hour during which websites and other services hosted on the servers will be unavailable.

Email and DNS services will not be affected.

The hosting control panel will remain online, but will be unable to apply changes to your services until connectivity to the server is restored.

Affected customers who would like have their services relocated to a different server prior to 20 August 2026 should contact the Opalstack support team to make the necessary arrangements.

Scheduled US IMAP email server downtime

On 26 August 2026 at between 11:00 am and 4:00 pm US/Pacific time our network team will be performing infrastructure maintenance. During this 5-hour window, network connectivity to one of our US IMAP/POP3 email servers will be interrupted for up to 1 hour.

As a result, some customer mailboxes will be unavailable for up to 1 hour during the network interruption. Customers who will be impacted by the interruption have been emailed directly.

No incoming mail will be lost during the interruption. Mail that arrives during the interruption will be deferred and delivered once connectivity to the mail server is restored.

Email forwarding and SMTP services will not be affected, however messages sent via SMTP during the interruption will not be stored as sent mail in IMAP folders on the server.

We'll update our status page at http://status.opalstack.com/ at the beginning of the maintenance window. To be informed of system status updates automatically please subscribe at https://status.opalstack.com/subscribe.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this maintenance then please contact the Opalstack support team.

Past Incidents

26th October 2020

No incidents reported

25th October 2020

Email: USA US SMTP blocked by outlook.com

Our US SMTP server smtp.us.opalstack.com is currently on a Microsoft block list used by the following domains and their non-US equivalents:

  • hotmail.com
  • live.com
  • msn.com
  • outlook.com

We're working to get the server delisted at this time.

  • Microsoft is no longer blocking our US SMTP.

  • Microsoft has responded saying that our US SMTP will be removed from the blacklist within the next 24-48 hours.

  • Microsoft have responded to our inquiry. It appears that the recent influx of WebFaction customers 🎉 has caused a sudden increase our outgoing mail volume and that this is what triggered the block.

    We've verified via Microsoft's own postmaster tools that there have been zero complaints regarding mail from our US SMTP and have provided this data to Microsoft for consideration.

    We hope to follow up with a resolution to this issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

    • 24th October 2020

    No incidents reported

    23rd October 2020

    No incidents reported

    22nd October 2020

    No incidents reported

    21st October 2020

    Web: multiple locations Let's Encrypt rate limit for opalstacked.com subdomains

    At this time the Let's Encrypt service is rate-limiting certificate issue and renewal requests for the entire *.opalstacked.com domain. This is the domain that we use to provide free subdomains to our hosting customers.

    We're working with the LE team to get a higher limit. In the meantime if you are attempting to issue a LE cert for a site that uses your opalstacked.com subdomain then it may fail. If this happens you'll receive a failure notice via email.

    Until the rate limit is raised then the alternative is to use one of your own registered domains on your site instead of your opalstacked.com subdomain. If you're not ready to point your domain at Opalstack, then you can create a testing subdomain and A record via your NS provider to point that subdomain at your Opalstack server.

    We'll update this issue as soon as the rate limit has been raised.

  • We've made some changes to the way Let's Encrypt works with the shared opalstacked.com domain and as a result the domain is no longer rate-limited. We'll be posting updated documentation with the details later this week.

  • Looks like we've hit our new limit, we'll get this corrected ASAP.

  • We've confirmed that our increased rate limits are in effect, Calling this fixed, thanks for your patience :-)

  • The LE service has increased our limit and at this time we are not seeing any rate-limiting for new LE certificates and renewals on any domains. We'll continue to monitor.

    • 20th October 2020

    No incidents reported

    19th October 2020

    Web: Dallas Opal4 offline

    Opal4 (Dallas shared hosting) is currently not responding to ping. We're looking into it at this time.

  • The issue was caused by a spike in system load due to temporary high network usage. The server is now stable.