Knowledgebase » Knowledgebase » E-mail » Email Related Issues

General information of our email service

Mark — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:42:32 GMT

We provide all clients with email service on their primary domain (most likely it is your first domain add) for free.

Email service management
You can manage your email service via web interface at http://mail.yourdomain.com and the login name is the full email address such as postmaster@yourdomain.com, not just the user name.
You can also use Hosting Control Panel to add, remove and manage your mail account directly.
You should only access mail servers using the hostnames as mail.yourdomain.com. Accessing them via IP addresses is not recommended because the server ip may be changed while the hostnames normally will not be changed.

Email client support
You can set up mail client such as Outlook on your local machine to send and receive emails.
The port settings of our mail servers are as following:
SMTP port: 25 or 366
POP Port: 110
IMAP Port: 143
For details about mail client setting instructions please refer here.

Sending email with web script
Our mail servers support SMTP Authentication to authenticate users to send email through your SMTP (outgoing) server, mail.yourdomain.com.
It means your web page can send email through our mail server. You only need to supply the valid login and password in script.
SMTP Authentication prevent non-authorized users from being able to send emails or abuse your mail server for spamming.
For for information and script sample, please refer here.

Server limit settings
The maximum number of recipients per message is set to 50 on all of our mail servers. You may need to send a message multiple times if the recipients are over 50. The limit is to prevent spammer using your mail server for spamming. We strictly prohibits members from sending unsolicited mass emails or Spam, whether via email, Usenet or any other form. Any member using spamming techniques for soliciting referrals will be immediately terminated. In addition, their mailing address will be ineligible for opening a new membership account.
The maximum email size is set to 30MB including attachments.

Setup MX Records to Google Apps

Mark — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:56:41 GMT

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Configuring Your MX Records to Google Apps.

Log in to control panel and go to DNS.
Select the domain name that you'd like to use with Google Apps.
Click Edit Zone.
Delete MX record mail.YourDomain.com. Keep the A-record of mail.YourDomain.com for future reference. It is important when you need to retrieve to old setting.

E.g. The one in yellow color below:

Insert the MX records provided by Google (please refer to http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=53722 for most update values) :
Mail Server                          Priority
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.         1
ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.   5
ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.   10
ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.     15
ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.     20
ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.     25
ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.     30

Therefore, add the MX record one by one as below:

Add MX record
.yourdomain.com   mx=> priority   ttl:
Do not overwrite other MX record.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add MX record
.yourdomain.com   mx=> priority   ttl:
Do not overwrite other MX record.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add MX record
.yourdomain.com   mx=> priority   ttl:
Do not overwrite other MX record.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add MX record
.yourdomain.com   mx=> priority   ttl:
Do not overwrite other MX record.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add MX record
.yourdomain.com   mx=> priority   ttl:
Do not overwrite other MX record.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add MX record
.yourdomain.com   mx=> priority   ttl:
Do not overwrite other MX record.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Add MX record
.yourdomain.com   mx=> priority   ttl:
Do not overwrite other MX record.

Note the change in DNS record may take about 1 hour to propagate.

How do I subscribe / unsubscribe from my mailing list?

Mark — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:30:44 GMT

We no longer support mailing list under in Smartermail. We provide our own mailing list system. To use mailing list, please login your control panel -> Mail -> Mail List Manager

I forgot my postmaster password, how to reset it?

Mark — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:08:23 GMT

If you forgot your postmaster password, you can login to your control panel -> Mail -> Email Manager
Here you can click the "EDIT" icon to reset any email account password.

How to creating mail accounts before switching my Domain to your DNS Servers?

Mark — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:03:46 GMT

Login your hosting control panel. Click "Mail" on the top navigation bar, then click on "Email Manager" on the left sub menu. In the center panel, under "Email Admin", click on "go" beside the domain entry. Then you will be able to add new email users.

This will let you setupyour mail accounts but you will not be able to send/receive until youchange your domain's DNS settings to ours.

Email Admin

Do I have to logon to the Control panel every time I want to check e-mail?

Mark — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:43:08 GMT

No. You can use its webmail interface of the domain with email service

1. Open a web browser and type: http://mail.domain.com Where domain is your
domain; i.e. mail.myapple.com, mail.myorange.com etc.

2. Login with:

Useraccount: name@domain.com (type your full e-mail address)
Password: e-mail account password
Timezone: choose timezone (optional)

How to prevent someone from sending out spams to me with my own From address? (also known as email spoofing)

Mark — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:18:49 GMT

It is very easy for spammer to fake your email address because "From address" is not restricted in SMTP protocol. It depends on the relay server (in most situation, the sender server) whether verify the from address before sending out. Many mail providers on market do not restrict this rule.

To reduce spoofing, you can perform follow precautions:

1. Set up SPF record for your email domains. SPF record tells the mail receiving server information about validity of sending servers. It specific which mail servers will send out email on behalf of your domain. (you can see setup instruction here)

2. Do NOT put your own domain as Trusted sender or White list. Otherwise your SPF may not work.

3. Avoid use common names such as sales, support, info, webmaster for email address. These common email address will have a high risk of being spamed and spoofed.

4. Avoid display your email address on your website via HTML. If you have your email address on your website, it'll get crawled by spambot easily. You should use an image instead. Create an image with your email address on it and then display it on your website.

What is SPF and how to prevent spoofing by setup SPF record?

Mark — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:14:23 GMT

SPF record tells the mail receiving server information about validity of sending servers. It specific which mail servers will send out email on behalf of your domain.

To setup or modify SPF, login Control Panel -> DNS -> chooose your domain and click edit Zone.

Here is some sample SPF:

allows domain's MX recordes to send mail for this domain, prohibit all others:
"v=spf1 mx ptr -all"

allows only the specified ips to send mail for the domain, prohibit all others:
"v=spf1 ip4:216.10.244.151 ip4:66.226.27.224 ip4:216.10.240.224 mx ptr -all"

You can find a SPF generate Wizard and details of SPF here:
http://www.openspf.org/

Why did your hosting disable auto forward to Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Comcast and Verizon

Mark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:23:19 GMT

Due to the increase in ISPs and Web Hosting companies including ourselves being blacklisted by major email service providers, eg. Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Verizon and Comcast's email automated SPAM filter from time to time, effective Sunday 11/25/2007, all email being automatically forwarded to Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Verizon and Comcast from our mail servers will be discarded.

We suggest you to use POP3 retrieval described in This Article instead of using auto-forward. In addition, you will have a choice of being migrated to a machine that will continue to allow auto-forwards. However, this will be at your own risk because the mail server will easily be getting blacklisted and your valuable email will be lost in such cases.

We have implemented similar policy to improve email delivery since 2006. The result is very satisfying.

Here's a break down of the problem:
--------------------------------------------------------
1) You setup an auto forwarder from your domain to your Hotmail email account (you@yourdomain.com -> you@Hotmail.com).
2) Your customers send emails to you@yourdomain.com and the emails gets forwarded to you@Hotmail.com automatically
3) One day you receive some spam at you@yourdomain.com, which was auto forwarded directly to you@Hotmail.com.
4) Hotmail detects the content of the email as spam.
5) Hotmail's spam filter does not register the originator of the email as the spammer - instead, it registers the last place the email came from as the spammer. And in this case and the last place the email came from is our email server which hosts you@yourdomain.com.
6) Hotmail will then blacklist the entire mail server, so that no one can send email to any Hotmail email accounts.

What do I need to do?
--------------------------------------------------------
You need to login to your email admin and go through your email accounts and take off any forwarding that forwards email to Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Verizon and Comcast accounts. Also check to make sure your email Alias is not forwarding to those email accounts.

Although it might be an inconvenience to many, we think this decision is necessary in order to protect all of our valuable customers from being blacklisted by the said email service providers. It's unfortunate but is in everyone's best interests.

IMPORTANT NOTE, this does not mean you cannot send emails to Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Verizon and Comcast email accounts. This simply means you cannot set your email account to auto forward emails to email accounts provided by those email service providers. You will still be able to compose your own email to users from the said email service providers, and you will be able to forward an email to Hotmail users from your mailbox manually.

If you wish to be migrated to an email server that allows auto forwards, please submit a support request via our helpdesk.

Alternative to email auto forwarding: using POP3 retrieval

Mark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:21:53 GMT

Many times auto-forwarding your email from our mail server to external email service providers is not a wise choice, because the final receiving end would often consider these as spam and the emails gets lost if the final destination rejects the email.

An alternative would be to set up a POP3 retrieval from the external email service provider. This serves the same purpose as setting up email forwarding from your hosting account. By setting up POP3 retrieval, your mailbox at other email server connects to hosting mail server once a few minute, if new mail is found it's pulled to your mailbox at the external provider. This is far less abusive to the external service provider, hence, increasing your delivery rate.

To set up POP3 retrieval for Yahoo please go to:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/manage/manage-46.html

To set up POP3 retrieval from Gmail please go to:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=gmail&hl=en&answer=21288

To set up POP3 retrieval from Hotmail/MSN please go to your Hotmail Help and search for "Add a POP3 account"

How can I reduce or avoid Spams

Mark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:19:08 GMT

There are certain things you can do to reduce or avoid getting more spams.

1) Never use a catch all account. There are many virus and spambots on the net that will simply spam to anything@yourdomain.com If you have catch all enabled, you'll get bombard by spam on a daily basis.

2) Choose a good email address. Ex:, virus, spambots and spammer often spam to common email address. Exmaple, sales@yourdomain.com, support@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com , webmaster@yourdomain.com and etc. These are the most common email address people create and use.

3) Never display your email address on your website via HTML. If you have your email address on your website, it'll get crawled by spambot easily. You should use an image instead. Create an image with your email address on it and then display it on your website.

4) Do not change default spam filter rules unless you absolutely know what you are doing.

5) Setup keyword filtering rules to reduce spam.

6) NEVER set email to bounce when 'Marked' as spam. This will only tell the spammer that your email account is valid and it'll result in more spam.

7) Do not click on the links in spam messages, including unsubscribe links. These frequently contain a code that identifies the e-mail address of the recipient, and can confirm the spam has been delivered and that you responded.

8) If you have an e-mail address that receives a very large amount of spam, consider replacing it with a new address and informing your contacts of the new address. Once you are on lots of spammers' mailing lists, it is likely that the address will receive more and more spam.

9) Make sure that your anti-virus software is up to date. Many viruses and Trojans scan the hard disk for e-mail addresses to send spam and viruses. Avoid spamming your colleagues by keeping your anti-virus software up to date.

10) Use the firewall included with your operating system, or use a firewall from a reputable company, to avoid your computer being hacked or infected with a worm and used as a spam-sending zombie.

11) Do not respond to e-mail requests to validate or confirm any of your account details. Your bank, credit card company, eBay, Paypal, etc., already have your account details, so would not need you to validate them. If you are unsure if a request for personal information from a company is legitimate, contact the company directly or type the Web site URL directly into your browser. Do not click on the links in the e-mail, as they may be fake links to phishing Web sites.

12) Do not click on unusual links. Confirm the sender did send the e-mail if it looks suspicious.

13) Never give out your login details to anyone.

Can SPF help on spamming issue?

Mark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:18:03 GMT

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) allows software to identify messages that are or are not authorized to use the domain name in the SMTP HELO and MAIL FROM (Return-Path) commands, based on information published in a sender policy of the domain owner. Forged return paths are common in e-mail spam and result in backscatter.

Spammers can use any domain name as their sender address in script mails. We can setup SPF record for your domain to prevent spammers to use your domain as spamming purpose. Although SPF can prevent spammers to use your domain as their spam mails, it might not work for some old servers. For example, if the spammer use your domain to send an email to a server that will not check SPF, the mail will still bounce back to your mailbox. So we can't guarantee setting SPF will fix the problem completely. But as far as I know, common mail providers like yahoo, hotmail and gmail will check SPF.

How do I make sure I don't lose any emails during transfer?

Mark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:17:32 GMT

If you setup email service on new server before changing DNS you'll not lose any emails. Please make sure you do not cancel your old email service until you know the new email service is working, you should not lose any emails. We recommend you wait a few weeks after the transfer, so that you can still retrieve email from the old provider.

How do I create my e-mail accounts before switching over?

Mark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:15:03 GMT

Follow these instructions:

1. Login to your hosting control panel.

2. Go to Mail Manager to create your email accounts.

How is my Domain affected once I make DNS Changes?

Mark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:08:01 GMT

This is very important, please read below.

	How your domain is affected:Once your domain's DNS information is changed it will take about 1 to 2days to complete depends on your domain registry. During this period of transition, your domain may ormay not work from all places. This issue will automatically resolveitself by no latter than the 3rd day. .
	If your web site is hosted by another service: During the period of transition, visitors looking at your domain will either see: a) your web pages at your old host's servers OR b) your web paged hosted in our servers. .
	How your e-mail is affected: Please follow the section below "E-Mail Accounts Transfer" to avoid any email downtime.

I am getting no storage space error, but my email account is under the quota...

Mark — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:49:09 GMT

I am getting the following error, but my email space is under quota. What must I do to fix this problem?

452 <user@yourdomain.com> Mailbox size limit exceeded.

You can check the disk usage of the email account by login as postmaster@yourdomain.com on the webmail interface http://mail.yourdomain.com -> Reports -> Domain Disk Space -> Generate Report.

And you can change the quota of the email account in your control panel -> Mail -> Quota Manager.