How do I add an email address?

This article describes how to add an email address to your account using the DreamHost web panel.

Visit the Manage Email page in your panel:

Click the Create New Email Address button.

A fully hosted email address is an address that has an active mailbox that you can log into in order to send and receive messages. Fully-hosted email users can access their own mailbox as well as use the Webmail and the Mailboxes interface. You can also set up email users on third-party mail programs if you do not wish to access your mailbox through the Webmail interface.

Email settings

Email Address To the left of the “@” symbol, enter your desired alias. To the right of the “@” symbol, select the domain or subdomain the user will be created under. Malibox Login

Like it says, "just use the full email address!" Mailbox "Name" The name that will appear on the panel's Manage Email page for this mailbox. Pick a new password for me / Password Check the box if you want the system to generate a password for you. If you do not want the system to pick the password, you can set your own personalized password here.

Change Password? / New Password Again This field appears if you elect to set your own password. Re-enter the custom password that you entered in the ‘Password’ field to verify that you have it's correct. Limit total disk usage See also: Disk Usage Warning You can set the size of your user’s mailbox. The field is populated with the default size of 200MB. You can edit the size of the mailbox by entering a different numeric value. Email me daily warnings When you enable this option, DreamHost will email a notice to the email address that indicates when the total disk space for the mailbox is within 10% of the remaining capacity (showing 90% on the Manage Email page for the user) or if it’s within 100MB of space left for that user. Simply check the box for this option to enable it. (This is an optional feature, so you can choose not to enable it if you wish.)

The Tidy inboxes keep mail servers happy! in the Fully Hosted Email section contains the Inbox Archiver settings for your user. The Inbox Archiver archives old messages from your Inbox into another folder so that your Inbox doesn’t become too full, which can result in login issues with your user.

Remove read messages when inbox reaches The messages you have read will be removed from the inbox when the total number of emails in the inbox reaches this number. Older emails are moved first. Remove read messages from inbox older than The messages you have read are removed when they get older than the number of days you set in this field.

Even remove unread messages If you check this box, messages that were not yet read are removed from the Inbox as well. Save removed messages

You can set the folder name you want the messages to be archived to. By default, this field is populated with ‘old-messages’, so all messages that the Inbox Archiver archives will move the messages to this folder as long as you have the checkbox marked.

Email me when messages are removed Check this checkbox to have the system email you (at this address) when the previous rules have been applied and the messages have been archived.

Once you’ve finished entering all of the details for a fully-hosted email user, you can simply click the Create Address button at the bottom of the page to save the new information.

If the user was set up properly, you should see the following message at the top of the Manage Email page. If you chose to have the panel create a password for you, it displays in the message:

To delete an email address in the panel:

1. Navigate to the Manage Email page.
2. Click the Delete button to the right of your email address.
3. When prompted, select 'Ok' to confirm the deletion request.

By default, your domain is not set up with MX (mail hosting) records with DreamHost when the domain is set to be hosted. The MX records and all other mail hosting records are applied to the domain once the first email address is created.

After you’ve created your email address (and if this is the first email address created under the domain) the domain will need some time for the mail record DNS to propagate, which can take up to 6 hours for each record.

If your domain is already configured with the records for mail hosting, the newly created user should be fully active within 15 minutes of it being created.

The following records are configured when the first user is created:

• _domainkey (dkim)
• _autodiscover (srv)
• mail. (A)
• mail. (MX)
• mail. (MX)
• mailboxes. (A)
• www.mailboxes. (A)
• webmail. (A)
• www.webmail. (A)

There are two MX records for the domain’s mail hosting along with the records for the subdomains for Mailboxes and Webmail. Each record can resolve at different times, so one service may be active while another has yet to update.

During this time, messages sent to your user will be rejected with a bounce notification containing the following error:

Until the DNS resolves, the messages sent to your user will continue to be rejected. However, your user should be able to send messages even when the DNS has yet to resolve. This often causes confusion as to why a user can send, but cannot receive emails. Give it a bit more time for the DNS to resolve before the new user can receive incoming mail.

To send and receive emails, DreamHost offers the Webmail interface by default. This can be accessed once the DNS resolves for the webmail record. You can access the Webmail interface with the following URL: https://webmail.dreamhost.com.

Internet standards specify that you create the following specific email addresses, which every domain should have and use for the following purposes:

Address Purpose postmaster@example.com contact for any email issues, should exist for any domain that has email service webmaster@example.com contact for any website issues, should exist for any domain that has a website or http service hostmaster@example.com contact for any DNS issues, should exist for all domains since they all use DNS for everything abuse@example.com contact for any "inappropriate public behavior"