Set up email on your domain
To send and receive mail as [email protected], create a mailbox. The
services behind it and the DNS records that make your mail deliverable are
already in place.
1. The Mail service is already there
Every domain comes with a Mail service on the domain itself and a
mail server on mail.example.com: the host your users' mail apps connect
to and where webmail runs. You create neither.
So your DNS zone already publishes everything mail needs:
| Records | What they do |
|---|---|
| MX | Where mail for your domain is delivered. |
| SPF, DKIM, DMARC | Authenticate your mail so other providers accept it. The panel generates the DKIM signing key for you. |
| Autodiscovery records | Let a mail app set itself up from an email address alone. |
The panel manages these records, and they follow your mail settings;
nobody writes them by hand.
Sender verification explains each record
and why DMARC defaults to reject.
The one case where you create a Mail service yourself, e.g. for
[email protected]: open Services, select the domain, and create a
Mail service on it. The rest of this guide applies the same way.
2. Create a mailbox
Create a domain user on your domain under Domain Accounts. A mailbox belongs to a domain user: a person with a sign-in separate from your panel account.
The panel gives you a single-use welcome link to pass on, and the user chooses their own credentials. Invite a domain user covers the hand-off.
Not every address needs a mailbox: a forwarder, a group, a send-only account, or an address that refuses mail is lighter. See Account types.
3. Connect a mail app
Your domain users have three ways in, all from their sign-in portal on your domain:
- Webmail, available immediately at the mail server domain.
- A client that sets itself up. Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and other modern clients find the servers and ports from the email address alone. One that supports OAuth signs the user in with their normal credentials and two-factor authentication.
- App passwords. For clients that only speak classic IMAP and SMTP authentication, the user creates a password per app in their portal.
Mail clients & webmail covers the details, including the Apple configuration profile for iOS and macOS.
If your DNS is hosted elsewhere
This guide assumes this server serves your domain's zone. If your DNS stays at another provider, the panel shows the records under DNS Records for you to copy across, again each time a key rotates. Hosting the zone here avoids that entirely.