Email on your own domain

There are two different things called "email" on a website's page. One is about your website sending mail as your domain. The other is about you having mailboxes on it. They're set up separately, they need different things, and one of them you can switch on yourself.

1. Sending your website's email from your own domain

Your website sends mail: contact-form submissions, order confirmations, notifications. By default those go out from a ClickWhale address with your website's name on them. Turning this on makes them go out as your own domain instead.

Open the Domains section, click a domain to expand its row, and find Email from this domain.

Only offered once the domain is Live. Until then the row says Available once this domain is live. See Connecting a domain.

Press Send email from this domain and you get one DNS record to add at your registrar: an SPF record, which is how other mail servers are told that we're allowed to send on your behalf. The exact value is printed on screen; it looks like:

v=spf1 include:<the host we give you> ~all

A domain may only ever have one SPF record. If you don't have one yet, add the TXT record exactly as shown. If you already have one (because you use another mail provider, for instance) do not add a second. Put our include: inside the record you already have, alongside whatever is in there.

The domain's row then carries a Waiting for SPF badge, which turns into Sending as this domain once we can see the record. Nothing breaks while you wait: mail keeps going out from our own address with your website's name on it, exactly as before.

Stop sending from this domain turns it off again. Mail goes back out from our address.

2. Mailboxes

A mailbox is an actual inbox (info@yourdomain.com) with a password, storage and mail you can collect in Outlook, Apple Mail or on your phone.

This is not something you switch on yourself. The Emails section only appears once one of your own domains on the website has been set up for mail hosting at our end. Until then it says "Email becomes available once one of your own domains on this website is set up for mail." Ask us to arrange it; there is no button for it in the portal.

Note that this is separate from the SPF toggle above. Switching on sending does not create mailboxes, and having mailboxes does not by itself make your website send as your domain.

Once it's set up, the Emails section lists your mailboxes grouped per domain. Each group heading shows how many you have against the limit for that domain, 3 / 10 inboxes, and folds open and shut. Each mailbox shows its address, the name on it, and its storage used against its limit.

Adding one

Add mailbox, at the top right of the section.

Create mailbox and it exists immediately. You can set it up in a mail program straight away.

Changing one

Edit on a mailbox row opens three separate forms, each with its own button:

• Settings: the full name, a description for your own reference, and the storage limit. Save.
• Change password: a new password twice. You don't need the old one; as the website's Owner you can always reset it. This is how you get someone back into a mailbox they've locked themselves out of.
• Delete: permanently removes the mailbox and all the mail stored in it. You're asked to confirm. This cannot be undone, so collect anything worth keeping first.

What happens when things change

When a subscription ends. The Emails section disappears along with the rest of the website's management. The mailboxes themselves keep receiving and holding mail, nothing switches them off, but you can't reach them from the portal until the subscription is running again. See Your subscription.

When you delete a domain. Same story: the mailboxes on it are not deleted and go on receiving mail. What you lose is the way to manage them here. The delete confirmation says so. See Connecting a domain. If you actually want them gone, ask us.

When you turn a domain off. It stops serving the website, and it also stops being a permitted sender for it. Turning it back on restores both.

Common issues