How to set up email

When you have a website built and hosted by us we can also provide email accounts. We'll send along the settings you need, but it is important to pay particular attention to the options in your email software.

Often you'll have two choices, either let the email software find or guess settings, or to choose options yourself. We highly recommend choosing options yourself to avoid pitfalls later. This may be shown as a button for something like "advanced setup"  in the bottom corner or a box that says "automatically configure settings"  that you'll need to un-tick.

The reason for this is we highly recommend using POP rather than IMAP as the protocol for receiving emails. POP is much simpler to set up and manage your mailbox with, especially if you don't have the IT know-how or staff at hand.

If you don't have email software we'd suggest using Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird which is free to use and available for Windows and Mac: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-GB/

Why use POP?

POP email downloads the messages and usually has a simple option for what to do with the copies of emails that would be left on the server. Often this is just a tick-box or drop-down where you can choose to remove the server copy straight away or leave them for a certain number of days. This frees up your mailbox so new messages can arrive unimpeded.

Why not use IMAP?

IMAP email syncs between server and the email on your computer/device. Now this has it's advantages and if you have the know-how it's hands down the choice for the IT professional or those with excellent IT support in their office.

The big downside is it will inevitably allow your mailbox to become full, sometimes very quickly, and this will prevent delivery of new messages to you.

With IMAP there usually is no option to manage server copies of emails, or automatically download/archive them to your device. This makes it trickier to use and manage, especially if you want or need to keep emails for a decent length of time.

Imagine an American style mailbox for your post that's outside. When you receive post it is delivered to the box. With POP and our recommended settings, your email software is fetching the message from your mailbox and bringing it inside at some point (as per your setting). This leaves plenty of room for more deliveries.

Using that same analogy, IMAP is letting you read the message, but then keeping it in the mailbox for later. You can imagine after some more deliveries the box is filling up. The problem is also amplified when using the default settings of many apps.

For instance:

• When you send a message to someone, IMAP will be making an extra copy and filing that away in your mailbox.
• When you delete a message, IMAP will not be throwing it away where you'd expect, but filing it away in your mailbox rather than the bin. Emptying deleted messages may also not clear things up either.
• When you archive mail unless you've chosen a "local" folder for that, it will likely again go back into your mailbox.

That's a lot of extra mail, and not just what you're receiving each day going back into your mailbox. Unless you have an understanding of this server and "local" folder relationship it can and will cause your mailbox to fill. Ideally with IMAP you'd need to configure folders to "local" ones and have a local archiving system in place for your inbox.

The simple solution is often just to delete your messages very regularly and make sure they are deleted - which may mean asking us to check your server mailbox folders; but it needn't be that way. A moment selecting POP and making sure that the settings we give are followed can save a lot of frustration and clean-up of your mailbox down the line.

Outgoing Email:

The outgoing server requires authentication to send email, and the Account Username and Password are the same as for incoming email.

This will need to be set on the account settings within your mail client and you usually have to enter your email address and password for a second time, or tick a box to use the same login as the "incoming" settings.

The above step is very important and if you receive an error when sending emails then this is the most likely cause. 

This is usually done by choosing the "advanced setup" option or similar, and it is the best way to make sure everything is set up correctly - your email app may otherwise try to guess the settings which can cause connection or certificate errors.

Notes:

Passwords are case sensitive - it is best to copy and paste this to avoid mistakes such as upper case i and lower case L.

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