Creating mailboxes

A mailbox is one email address that can receive and store mail — ada@example.com, with its own password and its own storage.

Mailboxes live on a domain you have already added and verified. The Mailboxes page lists every one across all of your domains in a single place, so you are not clicking through domains to find a person.

Each mailbox has three things worth understanding.

• Storage quota — how much mail it can hold, in megabytes. The list shows how much of the quota is used, so you can see who is close to full before they start bouncing mail.
• Type — what the address is allowed to do. Mail & SMTP can receive mail and send through it. Mail Only receives but cannot be used to send from an application. SMTP Only sends but has no inbox — useful for a system address that only ever sends notifications.
• Status — Active or Suspended. Suspending a mailbox stops it being used without deleting anything in it, which is what you want when somebody leaves.

A mailbox can also have aliases: extra addresses that deliver into the same inbox, so sales@ and hello@ can both land with the same person without paying for two mailboxes.

1. Verify the domain first. Until it is Active under Domains, mail sent to an address on it has nowhere to arrive. See Setting up your domain.
2. Go to Mailboxes and press Add Mailbox.
3. Enter the part before the @ and pick the domain. Keep it short and predictable — ada rather than ada.okoro.accounts.
4. Set a storage quota. Somewhere around 2–5 GB suits an ordinary person; a shared address that keeps years of history needs more.
5. Choose the type. If you are unsure, Mail & SMTP is the normal choice for a person.
6. Set the first password and pass it to the person who will use it. Ask them to change it once they are in.
7. Give them the webmail address and their new email address. They can sign in immediately.

To find a mailbox later, use the filters at the top of the list — by domain, by status, or by type. Export CSV gives you the whole list, quotas included, for a spreadsheet.

Mail sent to the new address bounces. Almost always the domain is not fully verified. Open Domains and check that every record is found, particularly MX — that is the record that says where mail should be delivered.

The mailbox is full. The list shows quota usage. Raise the quota on the mailbox, or ask the person to empty large items and their Trash.

Someone left the company. Suspend the mailbox rather than deleting it. The mail stays, the address stops working, and you can hand the contents to whoever takes over. Deleting is permanent.

The password does not work. Set a new one from the mailbox. If the person has just changed it themselves, give it a moment and try once more before resetting.

• Setting up your domain — must be done first
• Senders and SMTP credentials — for applications, not people
• Go to Mailboxes