Creating an Email Account

Your hosting account includes mailboxes on your own domain. Sending from hello@yourbusiness.co.uk rather than a Gmail address changes how a contact page reads, and it costs nothing extra.

Creating a mailbox

1. Log in to DirectAdmin and open E-mail Manager → E-mail Accounts.
2. Click Create Account.
3. Enter the part before the @ — for example hello.
4. Set a strong password. Mailboxes are a frequent target for automated attacks; a weak one turns your account into a spam relay and gets the server blacklisted.
5. Set a sensible quota. Unlimited counts against your 5GB total storage, so a fixed figure prevents one mailbox filling the account.
6. Save.

Reading your mail

Webmail is available immediately at https://yourdomain.co.uk/webmail or through the DirectAdmin panel. Nothing to configure.

A mail client — Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, your phone — needs the connection settings, which are shown in DirectAdmin next to each account. Use IMAP rather than POP3 unless you have a specific reason not to: IMAP keeps mail on the server so it stays in sync across devices, whereas POP3 downloads and removes it.

See Setting up email in Outlook for a worked example.

Forwarders, aliases and catch-alls

Forwarders send mail arriving at one address on to another — useful for info@ going to a personal address without creating a whole mailbox.

Aliases let several addresses deliver into one mailbox, so sales@ and hello@ arrive in the same inbox.

Catch-alls accept mail to any address at your domain. Convenient, but they attract enormous quantities of spam because spammers guess addresses. Leave catch-all disabled unless you genuinely need it.

Make sure your mail actually arrives

This is the part people skip and then spend a week debugging. A brand-new domain has no sending reputation, and without authentication records your mail will frequently land in spam.

Add an SPF record and enable DKIM — both covered in Editing DNS Records. It takes about five minutes and makes more difference than anything else you can do.

Storage

Mailboxes count towards your 5GB. Large attachments accumulate quickly, so if storage gets tight, check the mailbox sizes before assuming it is the website.

For the wider picture — the three routes to email on a domain and the DNS records that keep you out of spam — see the full domain email guide.

Changing a password or deleting a mailbox

Both happen in the same E-mail Accounts screen. To change a password, use the edit option next to the mailbox — the change is immediate, and every device using the old password will start prompting, so plan to update your phone and mail client straight afterwards.

Deleting a mailbox permanently removes every message stored in it, so before deleting one that has been in use, either download anything worth keeping via IMAP (drag the folders into another account in your mail client) or set up a forwarder from the old address first, so mail sent to it after deletion still reaches you. Deleting the mailbox does not stop people writing to the address — without a forwarder, their messages simply bounce.

Autoresponders

DirectAdmin includes autoresponders under the E-mail Manager — useful for out-of-office replies or acknowledging messages to a busy role address. Two habits keep them from misfiring: set an end date rather than trusting yourself to remember to switch it off, and keep the reply short and free of anything you would mind being sent to a stranger, because autoresponders reply to spam too.

Sensible address strategy for a small site

A little structure now saves mess later:

• One real mailbox per person, with role addresses (hello@, accounts@) as aliases or forwarders into it. Roles survive people; personal addresses do not.
• Keep the address you publish separate from the address you log in with. If hello@ appears on every page of your site, it will collect spam — better that it forwards into a mailbox whose own address stays private.
• Avoid creating mailboxes you will not check. An unmonitored support@ is worse than none, because senders assume someone read it.

Troubleshooting: cannot log in to webmail

• Username must be the full address — hello@yourdomain.co.uk, not hello. This causes the majority of failed webmail logins.
• Trailing space in the password, usually from copying out of an email or password manager. Retype it.
• Domain not yet resolving. Webmail at yourdomain.co.uk/webmail only works once DNS points here. Before that, use the webmail link inside DirectAdmin instead.
• Repeated failures triggering a temporary block. Wait fifteen minutes rather than continuing to retry.

Frequently asked questions

How many mailboxes can I create?

Enough for any normal small-site setup — the practical constraint is the shared 5GB storage rather than a mailbox count. Give each mailbox a quota and the total stays manageable.

Can I read my domain email inside Gmail?

Yes. Gmail can fetch from your mailbox and send through it — Settings → Accounts in Gmail, using the same IMAP/SMTP details as any mail client. You keep the Gmail interface; the address stays yours.

Does email work before my domain points to Traxio?

No — mail is delivered wherever your domain’s MX records point, so until DNS resolves here, messages go to the old destination (or nowhere). Point the domain first, then create mailboxes.

Why does mail I send go to spam?

Almost always missing SPF and DKIM records on a new domain. Five minutes in the DNS editor fixes it — see Fixing email that will not send.