My wife’s email on her iPhone failed today, constantly giving the error message, “Cannot Verify Server Identity.” She had made no changes to her account settings. What to do?
Trying to troubleshoot, I read numerous pages offering various solutions to this problem (one that many people have had and that Apple tech support apparently is not familiar with). Solutions included turning WiFi on and off, turning SSL on and off, and more Draconian solutions like deleting and reinstalling the email account and even deleting all settings. We tried a variety of things without success. Thank goodness for terrific customer service at DreamHost.com, the host of her main email accounts. The fix was simply to update the account settings.
 
If your email is on a Dreamhost server, the instructions that worked for us might help you.
 
For the incoming server, we were told to use:
IMAP Port: 993
Incoming SSL: Enabled
Incoming Host: imap.dreamhost.com
Username: <full email address>
Authentication: Password or Normal Password
 
For the outgoing server,
SMTP Port: 465
Outgoing SSL: Enabled
Outgoing Host: smtp.dreamhost.com
Username: <full email address>
Authentication: Password or Normal Password
 
Email is working fine now! Changing the outgoing server took about 5 minutes to verify. Our service guy said we might need to reboot the phone and do it again, but it was not needed. All is well! Happy wife!