SiteGround Tutorials
Email Tutorial
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.
Email addresses
Create Email accounts
You can easily create e-mail accounts from your hosting account Control Panel (cPanel). Here is what you need to do:
Step 1: Log into your hosting account control panel
Step 2: On the main page, please click on the 'Mail' icon.
Step 3: From the Mail Manager Main Menu select Add/Remove Accounts option (second from top)
Step 4: Click the Add Account link at the bottom of the page
Step 5: In the spaces provided, please type the name of the account, the password and the disk space you would like to dedicate to the mailbox. Click the Create button.
Step 6: You are done!
To login to the webmail interface, please use the following address:
http://yourdomain.com/webmail or https://yourdomain.com:2096/
to login securely to the e-mail web interface. In case you cannot reach that address, please use
http://yourdomain.com:2095/
NB: Please use the full e-mail account username to login to the webmail interface or when setting your e-mail client software. Example: you@yourdomain.com instead of 'you'.
NB: Please do not use the e-mail accounts marked with Main for sending messages. These are system accounts, which need to be checked regularly for measages to avoid overfilling.
NB: Some email clients may not recognize non-standard characters for the account name. If the account is not being created, make sure that all fields contain information before clicking on create.
Remove Email accounts
You have the ability to remove any added email accounts to your main account. The number of email accounts you have is controlled by your web host and shown on the main screen of your cPanel interface.
NB: You cannot delete the email account for the main cPanel user.
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 Add/Remove Accounts to enter Mail Account Maintenance.
Step 3: Click on "Delete" button.
Step 4: You will be taken to a page which asks you to make sure you wish to delete the account. Click on yes to delete the account.
Troubleshooting Tips: Make sure you are not trying to delete the main email account as it cannot be deleted. Clicking on No on the confirmation page will cancel the process and the account will not be deleted.
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.
Email Clients: Mozilla Thunderbird
Step 1: Open Thunderbird and select the Tools menu. Click the Account Settings tab
Step 2. From the new window select the Add Account button, then E-mail account and click Next.
Step 3: Enter your name as you would like it to appear in the From: field of all outgoing mail and the email address which the others will use to send email messages to you. Click Next.
Step 4: Please set the incoming server to be of type POP. Address is yourdomain.com
Step 5: Click Next and type in the username. Please use the full e-mail account name. Example: you@yourdomain.com instead of you.
Step 6: After clicking the Next button, please type in the name of the e-mail account as it will appear on your PC. Click Next, and then the Finish button.
Step 7: Click the Outgoing Server(SMTP) in the left pane. Use yourdomain.com as Server name set the port to be 25.
Then, check Username and password and enter the full e-mail address as username. Select No in the Use secure connection section.
Step 8: Click OK and you are done!
Please make sure that you check your incoming e-mail messages before trying to send any. Our servers use the POP-before-SMTP scheme, which disallows sending messages without checking your mail.
Email Clients: Microsoft Outlook
This Microsoft Outlook Configuration Tutorial is a step-by-step guide on how to configure your Microsoft Outlook email client in order to make it work with your web-based email account.
Step 1: Open Outlook, and click on the Tools menu. Please, select E-mail Accounts...
Step 2: Select the option Add a new e-mail account. Click 'Next'
Step 3: Select the type of account you would like to create (IMAP or POP3)
Step 4: Fill in the Internet E-mail Settings fields as follows:
Your Name - Enter your name as you would like it to appear in the From: field of all outgoing mail
E-mail Address - Enter the email address which the others will use to send email messages to you.
Incoming mail server (POP3/IMAP server): yourdomain.com
Outgoing mail server (SMTP server): yourdomain.com
User Name: please use the full e-mail account name. Example: you@yourdomain.com instead of you.
Step 5: Click on the More Settings... button
Choose the Outgoing Server tab and check the My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication checkbox.
Check the option Use same settings as my incoming server.
Step 6: Choose the Advanced tab
Here you can choose if you wish to Leave a copy of the messages on the server or not.
Please do not use secure authentication as we do not support this method.
Email Clients: Microsoft Outlook Express
Step 1: Open Outlook Express, and click on the Tools menu. Select Accounts.
Step 2: Click Add account and select Mail.
Step 3: Enter your name as you would like it to appear in the From: field of all outgoing mail.
Step 4: Enter the email address which the others will use to send email messages to you.
Step 5: Incoming mail server (POP3 server): yourdomain.com
Outgoing mail server (SMTP server): yourdomain.com
Please, set the SMTP port to 25 or 2525. (Read more about Port 25)
Step 6: Username: please use the full e-mail account name. Example: you@yourdomain.com instead of you.
Step 7: Click Finish.
Step 8: Now click once on the newly created account, and choose Properties. Go to the Servers tab and check My server requires authentication. Please do not use secure authentication as we do not support this method.
If you want the messages to be kept on the server, choose the Advanced tab and check Leave a copy of messages on server, click OK.
Step 9: You are done!
Please make sure that you check your incoming e-mail messages before trying to send any. Most servers use the POP-before-SMTP scheme, which disallows sending messages without checking your mail.
How to use webmail to access your e-mail address
You can use either the webmail interface or an email client. If you need help configuring email clients, please visit the step-by-step guides for configuring Microsoft Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird and Eudora.
For Linux/cPanel accounts:
You can easily access your WebMail interface by just visiting:
http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail
where yourdomain.com is your actual domain name. If that is not working for you, it might be possible that your ISP is blocking the access to non-standard ports accessed through SSL connection. In this case, simply put:
http://webmail.servername.com
where servername.com should be the domain name of your server (ex. http://webmail.siteground121.com)
Please use the full e-mail account username to login to the webmail interface or when setting your e-mail client software. Example: you@yourdomain.com instead of you.
Once you login, you can choose between three e-mail programs: Neomail or Horde. Neomail is an easy to use, but more limited web mail client, while Horde is the most sophisticated, but the most functional one.
When you login for the first time to your webmail services you will be presented with the default system email account. Please do not use the default email account because very often emails send from the system email accounts are going to the Junk folders. In order to use you email you have to create another email account with the same or different username.
If you are logging into this account's webmail for the first time it will ask you for configuration options, like "From:" field and a signature. Enter your desired options and click Save, and then continue to your inbox.
For Windows/Plesk accounts:
You can easily access your WebMail interface by just visiting:
http://webmail.yourdomain.com/
where yourdomain.com should be replaced with your actual domain name.
How to send e-mail messages?
You can easily send email messages via the web-email program you have chosen. Just find the 'New email', 'New message' or simply 'New' button at the top left corner of your window and an email blank will open before you and you will be able to start writing your message.
Please, SAVE your message if it is too long or you want to write it for a longer period of time. The web mail program may drop the connection and you might lose your email.
Email Security
The solution web hosts offer for webmail protection is called SpamAssasin.
Spam Assassin is an automated mail filter that uses a wide range of heuristic algorithms on mail headers and message body text to identify "SPAM" (unsolicited email). This software is capable of eliminating more than 98% of all SPAM messages. Its performance depends on the individual configuration, which can be tuned by each website owner. Once identified, the mail is tagged as "SPAM" for later filtering using the user's desktop mail client.
For more information, please visit the SpamAssassin developer's website.
To configure your SpamAssassin, please follow the steps below:
Step 1: To access the Mail Menu, click on the icon above the words Mail on the main screen of your cPanel interface.
Step 2: To enable Spam Assassin, click on Enable Spam Assassin.
Step 3: To disable Spam Assassin, click on Disable Spam Assassin.
Step 4: To enable Spam Box, click on Enable Spam Box.
Step 5: To enable Spam Box, click on Disable Spam Box.
Step 6: To configure Spam Assassin, click on Configure Spam Assassin.