The login method in smtplib.py tries only one authentication mechanism.
There are legitimate situations where cram-md5 might fail, yet plain or
login would succeed.

RFC2554 states:
  If an AUTH command fails, the client may try another authentication
  mechanism by issuing another AUTH command.

The login method should attempt all mechanisms in preferred_auths before
returning a failure. This will make the code more robust, returning a
failure only when absolutely no authentication is possible.

Here is one work-around.  The default smtplib.SMTP.login() doesn't work
for StrongMail out of the box.

http://www.harelmalka.com/?p=94&cpage=1