Mailboxes, forwarding and webmail
How to give a website real mail: turn it on for a domain, make a mailbox, set its password, forward an address somewhere else, and read it either in a browser or in a mail program. The DNS records mail needs have a guide of their own, because they are the part that decides whether anybody receives what you send.
How it is arranged
Mail belongs to a website, and to a domain inside it.
Open a website and choose Mail. A website can carry several domains, and mail is turned on for each one separately, so a customer with two domains can take mail on one of them and not the other. Until you have turned mail on for at least one domain there is a single tab, Mail domains, and nothing else: there is nowhere to put a mailbox yet.
If the tab says mail is not installed on this server, the module was not chosen when the server was set up. That is a server decision rather than a website one, and it is made by whoever runs the machine.
Step 1
Turn mail on for the domain.
On Mail domains, add the domain. Dashmox creates the mail identity for it, including its own DKIM signing key, and the other three tabs appear: Mailboxes, Forwarding and Connecting.
Adding the domain does not publish the records that make mail work. If this server also answers DNS for the domain, there is a button to publish them; if the domain is on somebody else’s DNS, the records are shown for you to copy. Either way, read Email DNS records before you tell a customer their mail is ready.
Step 2
A mailbox is an address and a size.
On Mailboxes, add the address and a size in megabytes. That is the whole mailbox: there is no password in this step, and there is no second form of it hidden behind an advanced section.
The size is a limit on what the mailbox may hold, not a reservation. Nothing is taken from the disk when you set it.
Step 3
Set the password after the mailbox exists.
The password is its own action on the mailbox you just made. It is separate on purpose: a mailbox that exists with no password cannot be signed into, so making one and handing the password over are two deliberate steps rather than one form that leaks a password into a page somebody may still have open.
The same action changes a password later, which is what you use when somebody forgets theirs. Dashmox cannot show you an existing password, because it does not keep one it could show.
The inputs
What each box means, and what it refuses.
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Domain, on Mail domains | One of the website’s own domains. A domain that is not on the website is refused: mail follows the website that owns the name, so there is nowhere to put it otherwise. |
| Address, on Mailboxes | The whole address, such as sales@example.com. The part after the at sign has to be a domain you turned mail on for, and an address that already exists as a mailbox or a forwarder is refused rather than quietly replacing it. |
| Size | Megabytes the mailbox may hold. A limit, not a reservation: nothing is taken from the disk when you set it, and raising it later needs no move. |
| Password | Set on the mailbox after it exists, never in the form that makes it. The server keeps no copy it could show you, so forgetting it means setting a new one. |
| From and To, on Forwarding | An address on one of these domains, and anywhere to send it. The destination is not checked for being willing to receive it, because no server can tell you that before the first message. |
Forwarding
An address can send its mail somewhere else.
On Forwarding, point an address at another address. This is for the cases where a mailbox would be in the way: sales@ going to a person who already reads their own mail, or an old address that should keep working after somebody has left.
A forwarder is not a mailbox and does not hold anything, so it has no size and nothing to run out of.
Reading it
In a browser, at /webmail.
Every domain this server hosts answers /webmail with the sign in page, so example.com/webmail works for a customer on that domain. It sends them to this server’s own name, because that is the name the certificate covers, and it is only that exact path: a website keeps anything of its own underneath it.
Whoever runs the server can turn that off under Server, then Security, where the same switch covers /dashmox for the control panel. Webmail itself stays reachable on the server’s own name either way.
The address to sign in with is the whole mailbox address, not the part before the at sign.
Connecting
In a mail program, with the server’s own name.
The Connecting tab shows the settings for this server. A mail program connects to the server’s mail name rather than to the customer’s domain, because that is the name with a certificate on it, and a name that does not match the certificate is a warning every time somebody opens their mail.
Receiving IMAP 993 TLS from the first byte
143 upgraded to TLS before the password
POP3 995 TLS from the first byte
110 upgraded to TLS before the password
Sending SMTP 465 TLS from the first byte
587 upgraded to TLS before the password
Username the whole address
Password the one you set on the mailbox
Thunderbird and Outlook ask the domain itself for these settings before they ask the person, and Dashmox answers both of the paths they look at, so a customer entering their address and password usually gets the rest filled in for them. Port 25 is open as well, for mail arriving from other mail servers, and is not a port anybody signs into.
Spam
The filter is on, and leaving it on matters more than it looks.
Incoming mail goes through a filter before it reaches a mailbox. It is shared by every website on the server rather than run once per customer, which is what makes it affordable to run at all, and it learns from what it has already seen.
It is not a setting to try turning off while chasing a delivery problem. A server that has stopped filtering starts sending as well as receiving the results, and the address of the machine is what pays for it.
Limits
A package decides how many mailboxes a customer gets.
Mailboxes are counted against the customer’s package alongside websites and databases, so the ceiling is set once for a kind of customer rather than argued about per mailbox. See Customers and packages.
Next
The part that decides whether mail arrives.
Mailboxes work the moment you make them, and that is not the same as mail arriving. Email DNS records covers MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and Outbound mail control covers stopping one broken website from spending the server’s reputation.