Create email addresses with your own domain

Before you start: mailbox, forwarder or both?

A good pattern for a small business is one mailbox per person plus forwarders for each role. Forwarders don’t count towards your mailbox allowance or use storage, and if someone leaves you just point the forwarder at someone else.

Create an email account

1. Log in to cPanel and open cPanel › Email › Email Accounts. You’ll see any existing accounts, including one “system” account named after your cPanel username — leave that one alone.

2. Select + Create.

3. Domain — if your plan has more than one website, choose the domain the address is for.

4. Username — the part before the @, such as hello. Lower case, no spaces. The full address is shown underneath so you can check it.

5. Security — either Set password now or Provide alternate email, which sends the person a link to choose their own password (best when the mailbox is for someone else). Use the Generate button for a strong password and save it in a password manager.

6. Storage space — set a limit, such as 2 GB, rather than Unlimited. A limit means one overflowing mailbox can’t fill your whole hosting account, which would stop email and uploads working everywhere. You can raise it later.

7. Automatically create folders for plus addressing — optional. Plus addressing lets you give out hello+newsletter@yourdomain and have it filed automatically.

8. Send a welcome email with instructions for setting up a mail client — tick this if the mailbox is for someone else; it tells them how to connect their phone.

9. Select Create. The address works straight away.

Changing an account later

In Email Accounts, select Manage next to an address to change its password, storage limit, or to suspend sending, receiving or logging in — useful when someone leaves and you want to keep their mail without letting them in. Check Email opens it in webmail.

Read your mail in a browser (webmail)

Every mailbox has webmail, so you can read and send from any computer without setting anything up. Go to https://yourdomain.co.uk/webmail and log in with the full email address and its password, or select Check Email in cPanel. Webmail is ideal for checking a new account works, and as a fallback when your phone or Outlook plays up.

Set up your phone and computer

IMAP or POP3? Choose IMAP.

IMAP keeps your mail on the server and syncs it everywhere: read a message on your phone and it shows as read on your laptop; sent mail and folders match on every device. POP3 downloads mail to one device and usually removes it from the server — fine for a single old PC, a headache everywhere else. Use IMAP unless you have a particular reason not to.

Your settings

In cPanel › Email › Email Accounts, select Connect Devices next to the address. The Set Up Mail Client page shows the exact settings for your account, and offers automatic set-up files for Apple Mail, iPhone and Outlook. Always use the Secure SSL/TLS settings. They look like this:

iPhone and iPad

Easiest: open Connect Devices on the iPhone itself, tap the iOS profile for IMAP over SSL/TLS, allow the download, then install it from Settings and enter the mailbox password. Or by hand: Settings › Apps › Mail › Mail Accounts › Add Account › Other › Add Mail Account, choose IMAP, and enter the settings above for both the incoming and outgoing server.

Android and the Gmail app

In the Gmail app tap your profile picture, then Add another account › Other. Enter your full address, choose Personal (IMAP), enter the password, then the server settings above. Other Android mail apps work the same way.

Outlook

In Outlook choose Add account, type your address, then open Advanced options and tick Let me set up my account manually. Choose IMAP — not Microsoft 365 or Exchange, which Outlook sometimes guesses wrongly — and enter the settings above.

Apple Mail, Thunderbird and others

Add a new mail account, enter your name, address and password, and if the app can’t find the settings itself, switch to manual and enter the values in the table.

Create a forwarder

1. Open cPanel › Email › Forwarders and select Add Forwarder.

2. Type the address to forward (for example sales) and choose the domain.

3. Under Destination, choose Forward to email address and enter where it should go.

4. Select Add Forwarder. Send a test message to make sure it arrives.

Forwarding to an address at your own domain is always reliable. Forwarding to Gmail, Outlook.com or Yahoo also works, but those services judge forwarded spam harshly, so turn on spam filtering first so junk isn’t passed on in your name.

Out-of-office replies

Open cPanel › Email › Autoresponders, select Add Autoresponder, choose the address, write the message and set a start and stop time so you don’t forget to switch it off. The Interval setting (in hours) stops the same person getting the reply over and over.

Make sure your mail isn’t marked as spam

Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo check that mail claiming to be from your domain really is. Three DNS records prove it:

• SPF — lists the servers allowed to send mail for your domain.
• DKIM — adds a digital signature to every message, so the receiver can tell it hasn’t been tampered with.
• DMARC — tells receivers what to do with mail that fails those checks, and where to send reports.

1. Open cPanel › Email › Email Deliverability. Each domain shows Valid or a list of problems.

2. If a domain shows a problem, select Manage, then Repair next to DKIM and SPF. Because your domain uses OnPoint’s nameservers, cPanel can fix the records itself.

3. Add a DMARC record if there isn’t one. Start gently, so nothing is blocked while you check everything is working. In cPanel › Domains › Zone Editor, choose Manage for your domain and add a TXT record:

   Name:   _dmarc.mybusiness.co.uk.
   Type:   TXT
   Record: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:hello@mybusiness.co.uk

   Replace the domain and address with yours. Once you’re sure all your legitimate mail passes (give it a few weeks), you can change p=none to p=quarantine.

Turn on spam filtering

Open cPanel › Email › Spam Filters and turn on Process New Emails and Mark them as Spam. Optionally turn on Move New Spam to a Separate Folder, which files suspected spam in a spam folder you can check now and then. Leave the score threshold at the default to start with; lower it if too much spam gets through.

When a mailbox fills up

With IMAP, everything — including sent mail and attachments — stays on the server, so mailboxes grow. When one reaches its limit, new mail to it is bounced back to the sender. Watch the Storage column in Email Accounts; to free space, empty Trash and Spam, delete large old attachments, or use cPanel › Email › Email Disk Usage to clear old messages from a folder in one go. Or raise the limit with Manage, as long as your plan has the room.

Sending mail from your website

Contact forms should send from an address at your own domain (such as website@mybusiness.co.uk) and put the visitor’s address in Reply-To. Sending “from” the visitor’s own Gmail address fails SPF and DMARC and ends up in spam. For PHP sites, create a mailbox for the website and send through it with SMTP using a library such as PHPMailer, port 465 and SSL/TLS — keep that password in a configuration file outside public_html.

Troubleshooting

Still stuck? Open a ticket with OnPoint support and include the address, the app you’re using and any error message.