Summary
Introduction
HostworX allows you to host your own email accounts on their mail servers. Creation and management of the email accounts is done via your accounts Hosting Control Panel (SolidCp). The email accounts can be accessed by using email applications like Mac Mail or Microsoft Outlook and also via webmail.
IMAP vs POP3
There are 2 type of email protocols IMAP and POP, each has their own pros and cons and you need to decide on what your situation is before setting up your email clients, below is more information on each, please read this carefully to decide what type of account you will need to setup.
IMAP is a mail protocol that keeps all messages and folders on the remote mail server (1 centralized mailbox). In addition, IMAP idle is an optional feature of the IMAP protocol that pushes all new messages to mail clients as they are received by the mail server. Unlike POP, IMAP offers two-way communication between your mailbox and your email client(s). This means when you use webmail, phones, tabs, laptops that are configured, actions you performed on any of email clients and mobile devices will automatically be seen in all the devices (and vice versa). Mails are temporarily stored on the devices when you open the mails, etc, however this will require you to maintain your mailbox on a regular basis. Also something to take into consideration if you delete a mail from any device it is deleted from all the other devices as well, ie you are using a centralized mailbox. Also
If you want to backup your email you will have to export your emails to a backup file and this would mean downloading all the mails stored online this can take a few hours in some instances. we do daily backups on our servers, however we run on a 30 backup cycle, meaning any email deleted from the servers older than 30 days is not recoverable, this is where pop accounts might be easier.
Please note our standard mailboxes size is 500Mb. If you leave mail on the servers you will be limited to this 500MB, or you can purchase upgrades to 1Gb and 2Gb mailboxes or alternatively you can use POP3.
With the POP3 protocol, your mail is temporarily saved in the mailbox on the remote mail server until you check and download your mail. When you check your mail, all of the mail is downloaded to your computer and then is normally no longer required on the server and it is deleted from the server, however if you are using multiple devices to check email, you can enable the "leave a copy on the server" option and set it to remove mails after X amount of days. This allows you to use multiple devices to check email and this automatically keeps your mailbox online clean. If you mistakenly delete a mail from a phone or tab, the mail is still available on your PC that downloads it. If you have enabled your email client to leave a copy of the messages on the server, you will be able to access your messages and folders from any computer via the Webmail interface or on your mobile devices.
A typical setup using POP would be your Laptop/PC would be configured for POP, and the "leave a copy on the server" enabled, your mobile devices ie phones and tabs would be configured for IMAP. The only issue with this setup is the sent items is not synchronized between devices, this might still be fine if you just check mails on a phone or tab and are not worried about the sent items. Please Note: if you use 2 laptops or pc's checking the same mailbox they need to be configured 100% identically. Backing up a pop account, is as easy as copying the storage folder to an external device like a hard drive or memory stick, and literally takes a minute or two.
Creating and Managing Email Accounts
Please see Managing and Setting Up Your Email Accounts
Email Client/Application Setup
Many email applications can be setup with just a username and password. The following are setup guides for common email applications.
Windows
OS X
Mobile Devices
- iOS (iPhone, iPod and iPad)
- Android
- Windows Phone 8
- Blackberry
- Blackberry Smartphone - POP/IMAP Setup & Configuration
- Huawei Phones - POP Account Setup
- Iphone 7 setup for pop or imap
- Samsung Smartphone / TAB to use an IMAP or POP Setup & Configuration
Webmail
Basic Application Settings
If you need to manually configure your email application you can use the following settings.
- Username: The email address (username@example.com) replace example.com with your own domain name
- Password: The password set for that email account
- Incoming Server: POP.example.com replace example.com with your own domain name
- Outgoing Server: SMTP.example.com replace example.com with your own domain name (the outgoing server requires authentication enabled and change smtp port to 590)
