Managing Your Email Accounts in cPanel Print

Where email accounts live

Your mailboxes are created and managed in cPanel, under Email Accounts, reached at yourdomain.tld/cpanel and found fastest by typing "email" into the search box at the top. This is the control room for email on your domain: creating mailboxes, changing their passwords, setting up automatic replies, and removing accounts you no longer need. This article covers the everyday tasks, one after another.

A note on which login does what: creating and managing mailboxes happens in cPanel, but reading and sending mail happens in webmail or your mail program. Our article on understanding your logins untangles the two if that distinction is fuzzy.

Creating a new email address

1. In cPanel, open Email Accounts and click Create.
2. Enter the part before the @, and if you have more than one domain on the account, pick the right one.
3. Set a password. Use a strong one, and note that the quality of this password is the quality of your email security, weak mailbox passwords are behind most of the compromises our security articles describe. The generator built into the screen will make you a strong one.
4. Set the mailbox storage limit, or leave it at the default. This is how much of your account's space this mailbox may use.
5. Click Create, and the mailbox exists immediately, ready to be used in webmail at yourdomain.tld/webmail or set up in a mail program using our email settings and ports quick reference.

Changing an email password

You would do this routinely for good hygiene, and immediately if you suspect a mailbox has been compromised, in which case follow the full checklist in our article on compromised email accounts, this is only the mechanical step.

1. In Email Accounts, find the mailbox and click Manage.
2. Enter a new password under the security section, or use the generator, then save.

The change takes effect at once, which means every device and mail program using that mailbox will stop connecting until its saved password is updated to match. That is expected, not a fault, update the password on each device afterward, and be aware that a device left trying the old password repeatedly can trigger the server's protective block, as our article on website access issues explains.

Setting up an autoresponder (out of office)

An autoresponder sends an automatic reply to anyone who emails you, the classic use being an out-of-office message while you are away.

1. In cPanel, open Autoresponders, findable via the search box, and click Add Autoresponder.
2. Choose the email account it applies to.
3. Write your subject and message, what people should see while you are away, and who to contact if it is urgent.
4. Set a start and a stop time. This is the field people forget, and forgetting it means the autoresponder runs forever. Set the stop time to when you return, and it switches itself off without you having to remember.
5. Save.

One thing worth knowing: an autoresponder replies to everything that arrives, including newsletters and automated mail, so setting a sensible interval, so it does not reply to the same sender repeatedly, keeps it from being a nuisance. The default interval is usually fine.

Deleting an email account

Removing a mailbox you no longer use is good housekeeping, an unused mailbox with an old password is one of the softer targets on any account. But deleting a mailbox permanently deletes the mail inside it, so before you remove one:

• Save anything worth keeping first, by logging into its webmail and forwarding or downloading important messages, because once the account is deleted the mail is gone.
• Then delete it from Email Accounts using the Manage screen, or the delete option beside the account.

If mail sent to that address should now go elsewhere, consider a forwarder in its place, so nothing sent to the old address simply vanishes.

Good to know

Two habits keep email on your domain healthy. First, mailbox passwords are the front line of your email security, so make them strong and unique, and change them without hesitation the moment anything seems off. Second, an autoresponder with no stop time is the most common self-inflicted email annoyance we see, always set it to switch itself off. Everything in this article you can do yourself in a couple of minutes, but if a mailbox is misbehaving in a way these steps do not fix, open a support ticket and we will look at the account directly.