Support

Email: Mail Manager

The Mail Manager allows you to manage the email accounts you set up for your domain. You can create mailboxes, set and re-set their passwords, set up mail forwards, autoresponders, and delete email accounts. If you have set up mailing lists for your account, you can manage them using this tool. 

There are three main sections in this tutorial:

1. Email Housekeeping
* Configure Your Default Mailbox to Reduce Spam
* Delete Mail from the Server Regularly

2. Manage your mailboxes from within your Control Panel:
* Create, Edit/Configure, Change the Password for or Delete a Mailbox

3. Configure your email program to receive and send mail.
 

Email Housekeeping

Configure Your Default Mail to Reduce Spam
When you open your hosting account, the Mail Manager creates a default account using your user name. This allows your domain to receive mail before you set up your mailboxes. When you do set up your mailboxes, delete this mailbox if you will not be using it. 

In addition to setting up your mailboxes, you will be able to designate how you want to handle default "catch-all" mail. Default mail is all mail sent to non-valid addresses at your domain. Spammers frequently acquire your domain name but don't always have your valid email addresses, so they will write to nonsense addresses at your domain hoping to get through. If you forward this default mail to a valid email address, you will receive these messages. If you forward it to a mailbox you use for the sole purpose of holding this junk mail, the spam will build up on the server and potentially cause problems for your account.

If spam is an issue for you, we suggest setting your Default mailbox to "Reject messages and do not send an autoresponder." This will automatically delete all mail not sent to a valid email address at your domain. Although the Mail Manager offers the option to bounce your default mail, we do not recommend this in the current environment as bouncing default mail tends to attract more spam.

Delete Mail from the Server Regularly: If you forward email to mailboxes on the server, you should set up your email program to pull this mail off the server regularly. If you don't do this, you must periodically manually delete email from the server. Otherwise, it can build up and cause problems with your account. The mail server is meant for mail delivery. Long-term and archival mail storage should be done on your computer.
 

Manage Your Mailboxes from Within Your Control Panel

Create a New Mailbox
Mailboxes for individuals or groups can be set up using the Mail Manager option. The number of mailboxes included with your account depends on the hosting package you purchased.

1. From the Control Panel, select the Mail Manager icon. The Mail Manager displays.
    
2. Select the New Address link by clicking on it. The New Mailbox page displays.

3. Input your username.
   Type your new mailbox name: yourname . Do not enter your domain name here. For example, if you want to set up a mailbox called sales@yourdomain.com, your mailbox username would be sales .
    
4. Input your password.
   Enter the password of your choice for this email account and re-enter it. This is the password you will use to check mail for this email account.
    
5. Select account type.
   Leave the default "POP." We do not support IMAP except under special circumstances.
    
6. Click the Add button. A message displays indicating that the user was added successfully.
    
7.  To finish setting up your new account, continue on to the next step - editing your mailbox.  

 
Edit (Configure) a Mailbox

Specify how you want the server to treat mail sent to your email account. Right after a new email account has been set up, you will be prompted to edit it. You can also come back and edit your account later if you change the way you want your email to be handled. Just click the name of the mailbox you want to work with and you will see the Mail Manager screen shown below.

1. Specify how you want the server to treat mail sent to this address. You have the following options:

• Forward the email to its mailbox at your domain. 
  Mail sent to you@yourdomain.com goes to mailbox on the server called you. This is the default setting. Uncheck this box if you prefer to have mail forwarded to your ISP address.
   
• Forward the email to another mailbox(es) at your domain. 
  Mail sent to you@yourdomain.com forwards to the mailbox called you. You can choose to forward mail to multiple mailboxes at your domain. To set this up, choose the mailboxes you want mail to forward to under "Users in your domain" and click the right arrow so that the chosen mailboxes appear in the "Forward mails to" box. 
   
• Forward the email sent to this address to another address on a different server. 
  Mail sent to you@yourdomain.com, sales@yourdomain, etc. all forward to you@your_isp.com. This is called aliasing, and many of our clients use this setup because it's convenient for them to have all their email forwarded to one main account. Check the box and specify the email address(es) to which you want the mail forwarded. 

Note: Mail will only make one hop. For example, if you forward mail from "sales" to "support," the server will place the mail in the sales mailbox and the support mailbox. If there is an off-network forward on the support mailbox, mail sent to sales will not be forwarded to that address.

The Example Above
As you can see from the example above (with relevant sections highlighted here on the right), you can choose more than one option for each email account.

In the example, mail sent to the sales mailbox is set to save on the server in the sales mailbox. In addition, mail addressed to sales will be forwarded to the mailboxes nicole and jake on the server. The mail will also be forwarded to Nicole and Jake's personal mailboxes at their Internet Service Provider addresses. 

You probably won't want so much duplication, but the example shows how much flexibility you have with the way you handle mail.

2. If you want to add an Autoresponder to this account, select the box next to "Autoresponse," and type your message. Any text you type will automatically be sent to anyone who sends email to the address you are currently editing. We recommend you use autoresponders only as needed - for vacations or times you will be out of the office. If you send an autoresponder to every message you receive, you will be alerting many spammers to the fact that they have reached a live address and this ends up attracting more spam.

3. Click Save.

 
Change the Password for a Mailbox

1. From the Mail Manager, click the name of the mailbox you want to work with and then click the "Change password for...." link.

You will see a box that looks like this:

2. Type the new password and re-enter it exactly the same way. For security reasons, it must be at least 6 characters. Click the Change button, and a message will display indicating that the password has been changed.
 

Delete a Mailbox

1. From the Mail Manager, click the name of the mailbox you want to work with, then click the "Delete...." link. 

You will see a box that looks like this:

2. Click the Delete button to confirm.

 
 
Configure Your Email Program to Receive and Send Mail
Use your email program (such as Outlook, Netscape Mail, or Eudora) to receive and send mail. It's easy to configure your email program. You need to tell it four basic variables:

Incoming mail: mail.yourdomain.com
Outgoing mail: mail.yourdomain.com (or use your ISP's outgoing mail server)
Account name: your_name
Password: your_email_password

Here are details about these variables:

See specific setup instructions here for two popular email programs, Eudora and Microsoft Outlook Express.
 

Related Info
Also see WebMail to learn how you can read and send email through your browser.
Also learn how to delete email from the server.
Learn how to control spam with our Spam Blocker programs.

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