What types of email accounts are available and how can they be setup?
The following types of email accounts can be created and maintained using the Plesk control panel:
Please see the Plesk documentation on Managing Mail for more information on how to setup and maintain various types of email accounts.
What are POP and IMAP email accounts and how can I create them?
POP & IMAP email accounts store email on the server in a mailbox. You can download your email using from the server using a POP enabled email program or read your email directly on the server using a IMAP enabled email program or by webmail. If you want to switch from a POP/IMAP mailbox to a redirect, log in to your control panel, select the domain, select "Mail", select the email account, go to the mailbox page and uncheck mailbox. Next go to the redirect page, check redirect and enter the email address where you want your email forwarded.
How do I change the name and password of an email account?
To change the password for an email account, do the following:
- Login to the Plesk control panel.
- Select the domain for the email account your wish to modify.
- Select "Mail".
- Select the email account which you wish to modify.
- Go to the "Preferences" page and make the changes you require.
- Select "OK" to save them.
What is an email redirect (forward) and how do I create one?
An email redirect (forward) is an email account that forwards email from the server to another email address, either on the same server or an outside server.
If you want to switch from a redirect to a POP/IMAP mailbox, log in to your control panel, select the domain, select "Mail", select the email account, go to the redirect page and uncheck redirect. Next go to the mailbox page, check mailbox and enter a password for the mailbox.
What is an email alias and how do I create one?
An email alias is a virtual account. When you create an alias all mail destined for that alias will be forwarded to your email account. It is an additional address that is associated with an existing mailbox.
To create and email alias:
- Login to the Plesk
- Select the domain for the email account your wish to modify.
- Select "Mail".
- Select the email account which you wish to modify.
- Go to the "Add New Mail Alias" page and enter the address you require.
- Select "OK" to save the email alias.
What is an email mail group and how do you create one?
A mail group is an email account that redirects to multiple email addresses. It is not an email list and should never be used in place of a real email list. If you want to setup an email list, here are some options.
To create and email mail group:
- Login to the control panel.
- Select the domain for the email account your wish to modify.
- Select "Mail".
- Select the email account which you wish to modify.
- Go to the "Mail Group" page and enter the external email address or select those belonging to this domain which are to be members of this mail group.
- Select "OK" to add the email address to the group.
- Ensure the Mail Group is enabled.
What is an email autoresponder and how is it configured?
An email autoresponder sends out a automated response when an email is sent to the email account it is associated with.
Autoresponders normally send out a reply each time an email is sent to them. You can control the number of the times a unqiue email address is replied to in an one day. We would suggest you change this from the default of 10 to 1.
Setting up an autoresponder does not change how email is delivered to an address, only what is sent back to the sender.
What is a catch-all email account?
A catch-all email account accepts all emails sent to undefined email address on the server.
Due to the potential increase of spam caused by dictionary attacks and bounces from virus spam, we recommend that you disable your catch-all email account (if you use one) by changing the setting in your mail preferences to "reject" and then create individual email accounts for all of your email addresses.
When the catch-all is turned off, any email sent to an undefined email addresses on the server will automatically be rejected and send a bounce back to the sender with the following error message:
Status: 5.0.0 550_sorry,_no_mailbox_here_by_that_name._(#5.7.17)
By default all "Mail to nonexistent user" will be setup as a reject.
How do you configure an email program for a POP email account?
For your incoming server use:
server name: yourdomain.com
server type: POP3 server
username: your-username
password: your-password
For your outgoing server use your ISP's SMTP settings. Your ISP is the company that you use to connect to the Internet. While it may be possible to use Illumen's SMTP mailserver, this could be disallowed by your ISP.
How do you access an email account with a web browser using webmail?
You can access webmail at http://webmail.illumen.co.uk.
If you add a DNS record for webmail to your domain you will also be able to use http://webmail.yourdomain.com (replace "yourdomain.com" with your actual domain name).
To login to your email account, use your full email address (
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) and the password for your mailbox.
You can also access webmail through the control panel.
Webmail is really useful if you need to access your email while traveling, or if you are temporarily away from your home or work computer, but it should not be considered a replacement for a standard email program that downloads email to your computer. Among other drawbacks, using webmail as your full-time email program puts you at risk for exceeding your email storage quota, which would cause your incoming email to bounce.
Webmail uses IMAP which accesses your email directly in your mailbox instead of downloading it as POP email. Therefore it is really important that you occasionally download or delete email that is being stored in your mailbox as well as delete old sent email from your "sent-mail" folder or else your mailbox will fill up. If the total storage space for the mailbox exceeds the quota for your hosting plan, then any new email sent to your domain's email accounts will bounce until you free up some space by deleting/downloading old mail (including deleting sent mail). Webmail is not as full-featured as a stand-alone email program, so if you have problems using it or do not like how it works, you might want to consider using a standard email program to download your email. Please refer to the help screens that are integrated into IMP for more information on how to use the program. You may want to check out the IMP FAQ on the Horde website for more information.
Is there a SMTP mailserver that can be used to send out email through the server?
In general, you should always use your ISP's SMTP mailserver for outgoing email. You can usually find this information in the support section of your ISP's website or in the setup email they sent you when you signed-up for their service.
If for some reason you do not have an SMTP mailserver, it may be possible to relay email through our mailserver using "SMTP Authentication". To do this you'll need to configure your email program settings to enable authentication and you will need to supply the same username and password that you use with your email account for incoming email. Use either your domain name (i.e. yourdomain.com) or mail.illumen.co.uk as your outgoing SMTP mailserver.
What can be done when a mailbox goes over its quota and email starts bouncing?
Once you have exceeded the email quota for your domain, all of the mailboxes associated with your domain will stop accepting any new email. Any additional email sent to any of your mailboxes will bounce back to the sender. To solve this problem you'll need to free up some space by downloading your email, or at least deleting some of the old email that you are storing on the server. If you are using an email program to download from a POP email account, then just deselect the "leave mail on server" option, so that your email will be permanently downloaded to your computer.
If you are using IMAP or webmail you'll need to actually delete some of your mail from the server (your deleted items and sent email are a good place to start). When deleting email using IMP Webmail, make sure to select the "purge deleted" option in order to permanently remove your deleted email from the server.
If you are ever unsure of how much email storage space is assigned to your website or you want to find out how much of that space you are actually using, you can check your email quota and current usage using the control panel.
If you need more email storage space, you should consider purchasing additional storage This may be necessary if you use IMAP and rarely download your email to your computer.
How you check a domain's email quota and actual usage?
You can check a domain's email quota and usage using the control panel.
- Login to the control panel.
- Select the domain for the email account your wish to modify.
- Select "Report".
- Select "Full Report" from the drop-down menu.
- Select "Mail Names" from the menu.
The email usage report is only run once per day, so the usage amounts that are listed are not in real-time. Any changes to these values will show up when the report is run for the next day.
If you keep receiving email from support indicating that the email quota for a mailbox has been exceeded, check the following:
- A user using POP3 client software like Outlook can set it to read and download email but still store a copy of the mail on the server to be accessed in the future.
- Users use our webmail feature only, but they do not delete any emails or download it.
- Some web mail providers, like Hotmail, allow users to grab mail from our servers and still keep a copy on the server. Therefore the mail server still has a copy of mail that has been read/downloaded.
How do I free up email space?
To free up your email server space, you need to educate all your users to not leave a copy of read mail on the server. This way, once you login into the e-mail server, you will download the emails and clear up the disk space. The "leave mail on server" feature is normally disabled in most email softwares.
Do you offer any kind of email list services?
No, we do not offer any kind of email list services. Here are a few things to consider if you are planning on setting up a mailing list:
- We do not allow the installation of any script-based mailing lists or mailing lists that are generated from a database. There are serveral reasons for this including the possible negative impact on our server's performance and potential for spam related issues. In general we do not allow any form of mass mailing from our servers or any other kind of high-volume mailing activities.
- Some ISP's offer email list services so it may be worth checking with yours.
- Do not use the mail group feature for a full-blown email list. Mail groups should only be used to redirect to a few email addresses.
- Do not use our SMTP service to send out mailing lists or any other kind of mass mailing.
How do you configure and use SpamAssassin to filter spam?
SpamAssassin is an open-source program that identifies email as potential spam by using a ranking system. It then tags the subject line with *****SPAM***** which makes it easier for you to filter spam using your email program or webmail.
SpamAssassin will only work for mailboxes that you have setup on the server, not for an email redirect that forwards to an outside email address.
There are individual SpamAssassin settings for each mailbox. In the "Mail" page of the control panel, just select the email account you want to modify, then select the "Spam Filter" option. Here you can do things like adjust the thresholds for marking email as spam, change the tag that is added to the subject line, and "train" SpamAssassin with email that is still on the server. If you really want to, you can have the spam automatically deleted as it reaches the server, but be careful with this option, since there is always the risk that valid email could be misidentified as spam.
If you want to enable or disable SpamAssassin for an individual email account, you can do it through the "Mailbox" page for that email account.
Please see Plesk's documentation on Setting Up Spam Filter for more information on how to manage SpamAssassin's mail filter settings.
Is it possible to buy additional email storage?
Yes. Please
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for details. For example, you may want to do this if you use IMAP email and wish to save email on our server.
I do not use email, can I add the email space to my web space?
No, unfortunately not. If you wish to have additional web space please contact sales to purchase additional disk space or to upgrade your Hosting Plan.
When I delete a mail user, does this mean the user's mail is deleted as well?
Yes. Before you delete a mail user, we suggest you empty that users mailbox first as their mail will still count against your quota even though the user no longer exists.
In Outlook 2003, how do I specify which email account to use to send a message?
To send an email from an account other than the default in Outlook 2003:
- Click on Accounts in the standard toolbar while composing the message in Outlook.
- If you do not see the Accounts field, go to the View | Toolbars menu and make sure Standard is checked. Maybe you also have to click the down arrow at the right handle of the toolbar and select Add or Remove Buttons | Standard | Accounts.
- Choose the desired account from the drop-down menu.
Please also see the Microfsoft online help resources for further information on all versions of Outlook.
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