WebHosts and smtp

[Gwydion]

I work for a hotel in the US that has wi-fi access, our ISP is bellsouth and our website is hosted by another company that doesn't provide outgoing email, other than webmail ofc. My question is this...Our guests cannot send email from third party programs, outlook express, thunderbird etc. Is this because of our host not having outgoing email or something else? Obviously our guests don't have email addresses that end in @hotelname.com so I am not clear why it would be our host.
Tech support at our isp says we need a host with outgoing email but I'm not sure if they are just trying to blame someone else or trying to get us to go with them for email support.
If we were to go with another host that does have smtp service would that fix it do you think?

[Compguy Pete]

We'll truthfully you need an ISP that does not block the ports needed for anyone's SMTP setting.

For instance at my home I have a cable company/isp that allows me to use any SMTP server I have access too... so they do not block port 25.

However in the city next door when I go to my clients and set up there email accounts I must use their cable companies SMTP setting instead of the one I provide with my hosting accounts.

So which is right... and which is wrong.

Neither! The Cable company that restricts the SMTP use is protecting it'self against spammers who would use that to send out mail to the countless people who don't want it.

On the other hand it shouldn't stop you from calling around and seeing if there are other options in your area. The last thing you want is to force your clients to change mail settings for only staying for a night or 2. Also it's going to cause a tech support nightmare, because if you make a change and all of a sudden something happens to the pc that client could blame what you did, your fault or not. Just an FYI.

[Gwydion]

Thanks for the quick reply CompGuy Pete.

So basically it has nothing to do with our host? Couldn't figure out how it could but I would be the first to admit that I'm no expert :)

Sounds like we are going to have to either ask nicely to have them open up port 25 (not likely) or just live with it. Don't think it's possible to shop around and get a better deal. Our choices in this area aren't that great.