Email Tutorial

Emails at your domain name

At this email tutorial we will try to explain how to use web based email addresses at your domain name. You might use email hosting services or regular hosting services which allow web access to emails.

The email tutorial is part of the rich collection of web hosting tutorials, which SiteGround experts have prepared for everyone. Find out how to start your website, how to promote it, how to deal with cPanel, webmail and FTP.

How to use your email services

• Once you have your own domain name, it is very smart to stop using free email addresses and create your personal email. Here you will learn how to create email addresses @ yourdomain.
• The webmail access of your email accounts allow you to open your email at home or at work or from any computer connected to internet. Learn how to access and check your emails via webmail access.
• The POP3/SMTP access allows you to set your email address to work with the convenient email clients such as Outlook express, MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird. Learn how to configure your email client.
• Nowadays email spam is reaching amaizing hights and it is always good to protect your mail box from unwanted messages or other forms of abuse. Learn more about email security - spam protection, email filtering, and tracing email addresses.
• Some web hosts will provide you email tools like email domain forwarding, email forwarders, autoresponders, and catch-all email. Here you will learn how to set them.
• Find out how to change the MX Record of your email account.

You may use this tutorial for your own use. You may not distribute it in any form without the express permission of the publisher. You may provide a link to the publisher's web site, where this tutorial can be used from. This tutorial is provided free of charge and without any warranty of any kind.

Change email password

It is very easy to change your email password trough your cPanel and you will be able to make this update even if you do not remember your current email password. To change the password you need to follow the steps below:

Login to your cPanel. From the cPanel home, you need to proceed to the Mail icon at the top.

From the Mail Manager Main Menu select Add/Remove/Manage Accounts option (third from top)

To change the password, you need to use the Password link next to your email account name.

In the spaces provided, please type the new password for the account and press the Change button.

How to configure email clients?

If you decide to use an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook Express, MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and Eudora, here are the settings you need:

Incoming mail server (POP3/IMAP server): mail.yourdomain.com
Outgoing mail server (SMTP server): mail.yourdomain.com Or Host: mail.yourdomain.com
Username: the full e-mail address. Example: you@yourdomain.com instead of you.
Password: Assigned in cPanel -> Email -> Manage/Add/Remove Accounts.
SMTP authentication must be enabled for the login to be successful.*

Please do not use secure authentication to your mail server.

Email ports

• The POP3 port for inbound emails is 110
• And the IMAP port for inbound emails is 143
• The SMTP port for outbound emails is 25 or 2525

Learn how to set your email clients to work with your webmail account:

• Outlook express
• MS outlook
• Mozilla Thunderbird

Email protocols

What is POP3?

Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) is a standard mail protocol used to receive emails from a remote server to a local email client. POP3 allows you to download email messages on your local computer and read them even when you are offline.

What is IMAP?

The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is a mail protocol used for accessing email on a remote web server from a local client. IMAP and POP3 are the two most commonly used Internet mail protocols for retrieving emails. Both protocols are supported by all modern email clients and web servers.

Main difference between IMAP and POP3:

The POP3 protocol assumes that there is only one client connected to the mailbox. In contrast, the IMAP protocol allows simultaneous access by multiple clients. IMAP is suitable for you if your mailbox is about to be managed by multiple users.

What is SMTP?

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the standard protocol for sending emails across the Internet. SMTP uses TCP port 25 or 2525 and sometimes you can have problems to send your messages in case your ISP has closed port 25 (How to check if port 25 is open?). To determine the SMTP server for a given domain name, the MX (Mail eXchange) DNS record is used.

Email Security

How to protect your email account from spam

About 60% of the total e-mail traffic in the Internet is SPAM (unsolicited email). Also there are many viruses distributed via email which are very dangerous for both your email and for your computer. That is why it is very important to protect your email. Below you will find tips which will help you ensure your email security.

• Do not open emails from unknown senders. These emails are usually sent with interesting subjects like: "I love you", "You have won the lottery", etc.
• Do not open emails that contain executable files (.exe files) even if they are sent by known addresses, unless you are sure the files are clear. These files usually contain viruses and may infect your email and computer.
• If you use your email address to subscribe to free newsletters, lotteries or other similar activities, this usually results in an increased number of spam messages in your inbox.
• Using an email client for your webmail account will lower the risk of getting infected or spam messages for email clients have inbuilt protection

Learn more about

• Spam protection
• Email filtering
• Tracing an email address

Email Security

Email Filtering

E-mail filtering allows you to select messages that contain certain string of text or other symbols, and either discard (not show) them, or send them to another e-mail box of your choice.

Step 1: To access the Mail Menu, click on the icon above the word Mail on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

Step 2: Click on E-mail Filtering to enter the Filter Maintenance menu.

Step 3: To add an email filter, click on Add Filter.

Step 4: Now select the part of the message that you wish the filter to look at from the first drop box.

Step 5: Select how specific you wish the filter to be from the second drop box.

Step 6: Enter the word(s) you wish to be used to filter in the blank field.

Step 7: Enter the destination for email that matches this filter in the blank field next to Destination (If you wish to have the email deleted, enter Discard in this field. To have the email sent to a different email address, enter that address in the field).

Step 8: Click on Delete icon to delete the filter.

NB: Please note that e-mail filtering does not leave a copy of the e-mail in the box you apply the filter for.

Troubleshooting Tips: Type a message in the Filter Test box on the Filter Maintenance menu and click on Test Filter to see where the message will go. Use the word(s) from your filter(s) in this message to test if they work.

Email Security

Tracing an email address

It can be helpful to know exactly where email is coming from. To see the path of an email from its server to your mail server, you will need to trace its address. This can give you information about mail problems and whether or not they are problems with your mail server.

Step 1: To access the Mail Menu, click on the icon above the word Mail on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

Step 2: Click on Trace an E-mail Address.

Step 3: Enter the email address you wish to trace in the blank field and click Show Route.

Step 4: If successful, an image will appear showing the mail servers involved in the email's path to your mail server.

This feature should only be used for email addresses that are not located on your mail server. If you use it for a local email address, no useful information will appear.

Email Options

Email domain forwarding

An email domain forwarder redirects all email coming in on a specific domain name to another domain name. For example if we setup domain.com to redirect to domain.net, all email coming in on domain.com will redirect to its corresponding user on domain.net. (mike@domain.com redirects to mike@domain.net). Any pop accounts setup under each domain name will not be affected by this forwarding option.

Adding Domain Forwarder

Step 1: To access the Mail Menu, click on the icon above the word Mail on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

Step 2: Click on the words Email Domain Forwarding to enter Domain Forwarding Maintenance.

Step 3: Click on the words Add Domain Forwarder.

Step 4: Select the domain the list is for from the drop box and put the name of the domain name you wish to forward to in the blank field.

Step 5: Click on the button labeled "Add Domain Forwarder" to create the domain forwarder.

Troubleshooting Tips: Make sure you have spelled the domain name correctly when adding domain forwarder.

Removing Domain Forwarder

Step 1: To access the Mail Menu, click on the icon above the word Mail on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

Step 2: Click on the words Email Domain Forwarding to enter Domain Forwarding Maintenance.

Step 3: Select the Domain Forwarder you wish to remove from the "Current Domain Forwarders" list and click on Delete.

Email Options

Email Forwarding (Email aliases)

E-mail forwarding is a service through which e-mail messages are resent from a certain account to another. Example: you have created webmaster@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com, etc. but you would like to have all the e-mails going to one and the same e-mail box, jim@yourdomain.com.

Create Email Forwarding

Step 1: To access the Mail Menu, click on the icon above the word Mail on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

Step 2: Click on Forwarders to access the Forwarding Maintenance menu.

Step 3: To add a forwarder, click on Add Forwarder.

Step 4: Put the name of the email address you wish to forward from in the first blank field. For example: for name@domain.com, put name in the first blank field.

Step 5: Place the email address you wish the email to be forwarded to in the blank field next to the '>>>'

Step 6: Click on Add Forwarder to add the forwarder.

Step 7: Click on Delete icon to remote the forwarder.

Troubleshooting Tips: Make sure you have spelled both email addresses correctly when adding forwarders.

Email Options

Creating Email Autoresponders

Auto Responders allow you to set automatic answers for email accounts. For example, your customers can receive a confirmation that their inquiry has been received or if you go on vacation you can inform your friends that your reply might get late.

Step 1: To access the Mail Menu, click on the icon above the word Mail on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

Step 2: Click on Auto-responders to enter the Auto-responder maintenance screen.

Step 3: To add a new Auto-responder, click on Add Auto-responder.

Step 4: Enter the email address you wish to send the Auto-responses from, the name you wish the message to come from, the subject of the Auto-Response email, and the message in the respective fields.

Step 5: If you wish the message to be displayed in HTML format, check the box next to HTML message.

Step 6: Use the drop down box to select the character set you wish the Auto-response to appear in.

Step 7: Click on Create/Modify to create the Auto-responder.

Step 8: Click on Delete to delete the Auto-responder.

Troubleshooting Tips: Make sure you are using a valid email address in the Email field. Also, make sure you select the character set you are using in the Auto-Response.

Email Options

Catch All or Default email address

The default or CatchAll address is the one, to which all e-mails, addressed to a non-available or mistakenly entered email account at your domain name are routed to. In case someone sends an email to info@yourdomain.com and you do not have such an address, the Catch all option will forward this email to your default email address.

How to set Catch All or Default email address

To set a default email, please login to your control panel and click the Mail icon. Click Default Address. Select Set Default Address, and in the space provided type in an e-mail box to which all unrouted messages should go. Click Change to apply your settings. Initially the default email address is set to your cpanel_username@yourdomain.com.

Please check the default email from time to time to ensure that it is not filled up with needed/unneeded messages.

Changing your default email address

The default email address will "catch" any mail that is sent to an invalid email address for your domain. All mail that is sent to an address that does not exist will go to the default email address.

Step 1: To access the Mail Menu, click on the icon above the word Mail on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

Step 2: Click on default address.

Step 3: To change your default address, click on Set Default Address.

Step 4: Enter the new default email address in the blank field next to your domain name.

Step 5: Click on Change to change the default email address.

If you wish to have invalid emails send an error back to their sender, use: fail: as the new default address. If you wish to have invalid emails disappear, use: blackhole: as the new default address.

Email Ports

How to check whether the email ports are open?

You may experience issues with the non-standard http ports Webmail works with. Usually Webmail can be opened from:

• https://mydomain.com:2096
• http://mydomain.com:2095
• http://webmail.servername.com

You may check the name of your server via your Customers Area. Please review the DNS Change article - the server name is the DNS server name without the ns1 infront of it.

Sometimes local firewalls allow access only to sites on port 80. In such cases, please use the 3rd URL. Note that the address "3" is a web based proxy which provides you with the option to access your cPanel via the default http port 80. We have set this extra service for our Customers whose Internet Service Providers have blocked ports 2096 and 2095.

You may check if the ports are blocked executing the following commands:

If you are running Windows do the following:

• Click Start
• Click Run
• Type cmd
• Type telnet mydomain.com 2095
• Type telnet mydomain.com 2096

If you are running Linux do the following:

• Start your Linux/Mac OS console terminal
• Type telnet mydomain.com 2095
• Type telnet mydomain.com 2096

If the port is not blocked the results should look like the above Trying IP_of_the_server ( 10.10.10.10 for an example )...

Connected to servername.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

Different result will means that the port is blocked and you should use the web proxy link provided above.

Please, find the default POP3, IMAP and SMTP ports values at the POP3, IMAP, SMTP and Email clients article.

MX Record

Option 1: Change the MX Record to point to your server hostname

If you have your domain name pointed elsewhere, but you wish to have your mail handled by your web hosting provider (e.g. SiteGround.com), you can easily achieve this by pointing your domain's MX (Mail eXchange) record to your host.

To point your mail service to us, you should change your MX record of your domain to point to your server's hostname. For example, if your account is hosted on siteground190.com, then you should change your MX record to: siteground190.com.

Don't forget to put a dot at the end, otherwise the mail will not be pointed correctly.

At SiteGround, you can check which server hosts your account from your Customer Area: My Account Section -> Manage. You can also see our illustrated tutorial about where to find the correct DNS settings for your domain name.

Option 2: Create a subdomain and point the MX Record to this subdomain

Alternatively, you can create a subdomain mail.yourdomain.com and point its A record to the IP of the server hosting your account. Then you should change the MX record to point to the new subdomain: mail.yourdomain.com.

The IP of the SiteGround server, where your account is hosted, can also be found in your Customer Area: My Account Section -> Manage.

If you don't know how to edit your DNS settings, please contact the other host/registrar and ask for further assistance. After you have pointed your MX record to its new location, please allow up to 48 hours for the DNS change to propagate.

Please, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or recommendations about this tutorial at: tutorials 'at' siteground.com