E-mail Accounts, Mailboxes, Forwarding and Default Routing explained

E-mail addresses are made up of recipient, the '@' symbol, and yourdomain.com (e.g. info@yourdomain.co.uk). In your Control Panel, the recipient will be either a mailbox or a forwarding address.

The examples on this page assume you are logged into your Control Panel (www.yourdomain.com/controlpanel) and have selected the E-MAIL option at the top of the screen. You can click an example to enlarge it in a new window.

Mailboxes

• Mailboxes are individual 'physical' boxes where e-mails are stored until you collect them - a bit like an in-tray
• Mailbox names are the first part of an e-mail address (e.g info@mydomain.com)
• Outlook [Express] connects to your mailbox(es) to collect your e-mails, or you can log in via Webmail
• You can have lots of e-mail addresses going to one mailbox (see forwarding, below), or if you have a number of people who need to receive their own e-mails, you can set up individual mailboxes (e.g. john@, fred.smith@ etc)
• Your default mailbox is info - this will be used to send invoices and renewal reminders to you unless you advise us otherwise
• Your e-mail usernames (for Outlook [Express] and Webmail) are made up of your main website account name plus your individual mailbox names (e.g. youraccount-info)

'Forwarding'

• You can set up other e-mail addresses to go into your mailbox(es) (e.g. if you work on your own you only need to check a single mailbox, but can have a number of e-mail addresses in use (e.g. info@ [main mailbox], enquiries@, john@, etc)
• Forwarding is ideal where the spelling of the e-mail address may be misheard over the phone, or where the spelling is ambiguous (e.g. john.smith@, johnsmith@ or clare@, clair@, claire@)
• All of these e-mails will be collected from a single mailbox (info) using the email username 'youraccount-info'

'Default Routing'

• This is what happens to an e-mail if it is sent to an e-mail address which isn't set up with a mailbox or forwarding address (e.g. spam@yourdomain.com)
• In the example, only e-mails sent to info@yourdomain.com, enquiries@yourdomain.com and john@yourdomain.com will be accepted. An e-mail sent to fred@yourdomain.com will just be deleted
• It is suggested that this is set to 'Delete mail' to reduce the amount of spam which is in circulation