I now have the information Homestead requested for resolving e-mail problem

About 3 weeks ago, I posted about a problem I started having getting e-mails after I got the https certificate from Cloudflare. I received a prompt response from Elyzabeth, asking for some additional information, which it took me till now to get. The original conversation has been closed for additional responses, so I'm opening this new conversation. I was unable to add screenshots, so I've cut and paste the information below. Thanks for your help!

Hi there,

Thanks for contacting Cloudflare Support and apologize for the issues you're facing here.

I have checked DNS part settings of your domain. Since Cloudflare does not proxy on port 25 (SMTP) - email service protocol by default for free customers, Cloudflare only takes its part as DNS resolver. As I check, the MX records are resolved correctly:

   dig MX ctcparty.com +short
   1 imap.homestead.com.
   1 emailmg.homestead.com.
   2 emailmg.homestead.com.

I went ahead to find the A records of emailmg.homestead.com and imap.homestead.com. which is the email services handled by Homestead:

   dig emailmg.homestead.com. +short
   66.96.135.48

   dig imap.homestead.com. +short
   66.96.135.96

However, when I performed a basic test of SMTP capability of those IP addesses:

   nc -v 66.96.135.96 25
   found 0 associations
   found 1 connections:
      1: flags=82<CONNECTED,PREFERRED>
      outif en0
      src 10.120.159.176 port 54765
      dst 66.96.135.96 port 25
      rank info not available
      TCP aux info available

   Connection to 66.96.135.96 port 25 [tcp/smtp] succeeded!
   220 ESMTP Fri, 21 Sep 2018 04:04:28 -0400: UCE strictly prohibited
   421 bosauthsmtp15.yourhostingaccount.com: SMTP command timeout - closing connection

   nc -v 66.96.135.48 25
   nc: connectx to 66.96.135.48 port 25 (tcp) failed: Connection refused

Both of them refused connection. You may need to provide the testing results above to Homestead and ask them to check why the 25 port is not accessible for 66.96.135.48 and why 66.96.135.96 is not sending the expected response.

Hope this works for you. Please kindly let us know if you have more questions and I will be happy to assist. Thank you for using Cloudflare!

Best Regards,
Shanshan 

Technical Support Engineer