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.

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:

cPanel Mail

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

Manage Accounts

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

Password

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

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.

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:

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 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.

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: 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 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

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.

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