WELL System Status
Monday, September 14, 2026 – Email
Update 12:10 PM PT. We estimate service will resume later today or this evening.
At 9:40 AM PT the Well’s email service, Zimbra, is temporarily down. We are working on a fix.
PREVIOUS STATUS UPDATES
Friday, August 28, 2026 – Email Issues
Update 1:50PM PDT. Email service is still being restored incrementally. There is still a large backlog of undelivered mail that is working its way through the servers. More recent mail will be delivered before older mail from before and during the service outage. Apologies for the inconvenience this has caused.
Thursday, August 27, 2026 – Email Issues
Update 11:20PM PDT. Partial mail service is now in operation. The mail server is back up and access is open. Mailboxes have been restored to their status as of 1:30 AM PT Aug. 27th. There is a large backlog of incoming messages and it may take overnight or longer to complete delivery. Tomorrow, after the techs have had a chance to catch up on sleep, we will start re-sending all of the incoming mail from outside the WELL that was sent since the beginning of the outage. All of that is saved on our servers.
We regret that mail sent between @well.com addresses, on the Iris server, after 1:30 AM PT Aug 27th is lost, as is anything that was added to the sent folder from the web interface.
A note for anyone using IMAP (Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or similar) with a mail client on their computer or phone:
As part of restoring the mail system, some messages sent after our last clean backup will no longer be present on the server — including some messages currently showing errors in Sent folders. Once the restore happens, your mail client will treat the Sent folder as reset to that backup point.
Update 8:15PM PDT. Recovery of email continues. We still don’t have a restoration time estimate
Update 3:25PM PDT. Well email continues to be unavailable as repairs continue. We don’t have a target time yet for service restoration.
Update 10:40AM PDT. Email will be unavailable for several hours beginning immediately. All mail will be delivered after repairs are completed.
The WELL’s email system is experiencing technical difficulties. It will be intermittently unavailable until further notice. Updates will be posted here.
Sunday, August 2, 2026 Conferencing System Computer Issues
This evening we’re experiencing problems with the computer running our conferencing system. It isn’t clear when this will be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience.
UPDATE 9:10PM PDT Conferencing in both Engaged and Picospan has been restored.
Monday, April 20, 2026 Email Filter Implemented
The Well has implemented an upgraded email spam and malware filtering system. Incoming email will be scanned more thoroughly than before, and suspicious email will be blocked or flagged for the user to review.
For more information, please see the Well’s Help Page ‘Controlling Spam‘ and feel free to visit discussions in the Spam Conference, <spam.> Topic 73 -‘New Spam filter information’ and <spam.> Topic 74 – ‘Discuss the New Spam Filter’.
For additional assistance, contact <helpdesk@well.com>.
Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025 NEW Spam-Fighting Initiative
The WELL has a spam-fighting effort currently in beta form, which will be implemented soon for all email users. If you would like to join the beta testing group, please email helpdesk@well.com with your WELL userid.
UPCOMING SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOW
Sunday September 21, 2025, 7:00 AM – 8:00 AM Pacific // 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Eastern (one hour total) There will be intermittent outages of the email system. Conferencing will not be affected, and no email will be lost.
UPCOMING SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOW
Sunday September 14, 2025, 7:00 AM – 8:00 AM Pacific // 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Eastern (one hour total) There will be intermittent outages of the email system. Conferencing will not be affected, and no email will be lost.
Tuesday September 17, 2024, 9:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time
There was a brief outage of the Billing Information Center at https://bic.well.com around 9:00 AM Pacific. Full service has been restored now.
UPCOMING SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOWS
Sunday March 5, 2024, 7:00 AM – 8:00 AM Pacific // 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Eastern (one hour total) There will be intermittent outages of the email system. Conferencing will not be affected, and no email will be lost.
Sunday Nov 12, 7:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific // 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM Eastern
There will be intermittent outages of the email system. Conferencing will not be affected, and no email will be lost.
Sunday Nov 5, 7:00 – 8:00 AM Pacific // 10:00 – 11:00 AM Eastern *
There will be intermittent outages of web access to conferencing and the account management portal (The Well’s Billing Info Center). Email will not be affected. *Clocks change as we “fall back” to Standard time the night before this maintenance window.
EMAIL Service has been restored at 9:35 a.m. Pacific, Thursday August 10, 2023. Temporary outage is resolved.
THREE SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOWS for ALL WELL Systems, posted July 14, 2023
- Sunday, July 16, 6:00 am – 9:00 am Pacific time // 9:00 am – 12 noon Eastern
- Saturday, July 22, 6:00 am – 9:00 am Pacific time // 9:00 am – 12 noon Eastern
- Sunday, August 6, 6:00 am – 9:00 am Pacific time // 9:00 am – 12 noon Eastern
On these days, there will be rolling outages as we do maintenance and upgrades on ALL WELL systems – conferencing, email, and web hosting. The outages may be much shorter than stated. All outgoing and incoming email will be queued for delivery. Apologies for the inconvenience.
SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOW for WELL EMAIL, Wednesday, May 10,2023, 7:00 – 7:15 PM PT // 10:00 – 10:15 PM ET Well email will be out of service for a schedule maintenance window tonight to resolve the lingering email issues. Apologies for the inconvenience. Conferencing will not be affected, and all outgoing and incoming email will be queued for delivery.
Email Outage Resolved, But Delays Persist, Tuesday, May 9,2023, 4:00 PM PT The Well experienced an email outage yesterday, 5/8/2023, resolved at around 3:45 PM. Because of the outage, a large amount of incoming and outgoing email that was queued up is now being processed. Mail will be delayed, but ultimately delivered. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.
SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOW: Sunday, April 23, 2023
There will be a brief scheduled maintenance window on Sunday, April 23, 2023, from approximately 7:00 am – 7:30 am PDT // 10:00 am – 10:30 am EDT. There will be intermittent interruptions to conferencing and email. Access to member web pages and web directories during this time will not be affected. No email will be lost.
SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOW: Sunday, April 16, 2023
There will be a brief scheduled maintenance window on Sunday, April 16, 2023, from approximately 8:00 am – 8:15 am PDT // 11:00 am – 11:15 am EDT. There will be intermittent interruptions to email service. Access to conferencing, member web pages and web directories during this time will not be affected. No email will be lost.
SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOW: Sunday, December 4, 2022
There will be a scheduled maintenance window on Sunday, December 4th, from approximately 7:00 am – 8:00 am PST // 10:00 am – 11:00 am EST. There will be intermittent interruptions to conferencing, email service and access to member web pages and web directories during this time. No email will be lost.
ALERT for GMAIL Users: Thursday, June 9, 2022
Recent changes in Gmail policy have caused (at least) two problems for WELL users.
(1) Outgoing mail from Well accounts that use a third party SMTP for their outgoing server are finding that their emails to gmail.com accounts are failing, sometimes with an error message and sometimes silently. For example, <puffball> might use Thunderbird to get their email from the WELL, but use smtp.sonic.net as their outgoing server. Email from <puffball> to <random.user@gmail.com> will not be delivered.
We advise everyone to specify iris.well.com as their outgoing email server for mail that originates from a well.com account. Instructions are in the email help page at <https://www.well.com/email/using-well-email/>.
(2) We’ve received and confirmed reports that Gmail is rejecting or flagging email forwarded from Zimbra, using the Zimbra Preferences setting. Email from a Sonic.net account to the user bounced with a message from Gmail saying
>Our system has detected that this message is likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail, this message has
>been blocked. Please visit <https://support.google.com/mail/?p=UnsolicitedMessageError> for more information.
We set a test account to forward to Gmail, and while it went through, it was flagged as dangerous.
So, using Zimbra Preferences to forward to Gmail is unreliable at best, and unusable at worst. If your WELL account is configured
to do this, please remove the forwarding address from Zimbra Preferences and use IMAP or POP3 in Gmail itself to retrieve (fetch) your Well email. To do so, in Gmail go to Settings=>Check mail from other accounts.
SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE WINDOW: Sunday, June 5, 2022
There will be a scheduled maintenance window on Sunday, June 5th, from approximately 6:00 am – 7:00 am PDT // 9:00 am – 10:00 am EDT. There will be intermittent interruptions to mail service during this time. No mail will be lost. Conferencing and member web pages will not be affected.
SCHEDULED DOWNTIME: Sunday, February 20, 2022
The Well will be installing a software update to the Zimbra email server to address a security problem in our current version. The installation will take place for about an hour beginning at 10:00 AM EST // 7:00 AM PST. There will be one or more brief interruptions in service on iris.well.com while the mail server is restarted. No mail will be lost during the short interruptions. Conferencing, including Engaged and Picospan, will not be affected, nor will user web pages.