The following post will quickly explain how to set up a dedicated email hosting account. I would like start by describing, for those who doesn’t know, what email hosting is. Email hosting is much like web hosting services, it will storage all your email accounts data but it also will define your email accounts sending reputation which is really important if you want to prevent that all your emails arrive in the spam directory.
Most website’s owners don’t care about an “email account sending reputation” they just create email accounts under a shared web hosting plan from any number of providers but if you have a couple of thousands of subscribers or clients, I’m sure some of you will start thinking: how can you improve an email list? Simple answer: you need an email hosting plan which offer good delivery with cross-platform email clients.
Fortunately, there is a few web hosting providers who offer dedicated email hosting plans like BlueHost (4.99$USD per 1 mailbox / 15GB storage) but a more fewer providers offer affordable dedicated email hosting plans like Web Horizon (12$USD yearly with unlimited domain names and unlimited email accounts / 4GB storage). Personally, I consider the “High Reputation IP’s” the top feature in all Web Horizon’s email hosting plans.
Today I ‘ll be using Web Horizon’s “Email – 10 GB” plan to show you how easily you can set up a dedicated email hosting account and start to sending emails securely to all your subscribers or clients. First, you must get your email hosting account here, after that you will receive a “New Service Details” email with the credentials to the DirectAdmin back-end panel. Once that’s completed follow these quick steps.
Step 1: DirectAdmin Environment
You can manage these email hosting accounts through DirectAdmin panel which is very easy to work with. The first action under this panel should be: check your domain names under: Account Manager > Domain Setup. Once that’s completed, you should check: Account Manager > DKIM Records, once in there, you will see all the DNS records related to your domain names.
Step 2: Adding DNS Records
It’s time to add the DNS records from your email hosting account to your domain name. All my domain names are under Cloudflare, so, I’ll be using it to add and change DNS records instantly. If you use a different DNS manager, it’s ok, no matter the user interface, all these DNS managers do the same.
Let’s start by creating a new “A” record with “mail” as name along with the email hosting account IP address, that information is available on: Account Manager > DKIM Records. Cloudflare users: make sure that the proxy status say: “DNS only“. If you have a “CNAME” with mail as name, you should rename it to old-mail.
Once that’s completed, create a new “MX” record with yourdomainname.com as name and mail.yourdomainname.com as mail server. Then add the two “TXT” records from: Account Manager > DKIM Records to your DNS manager, The first one (v=spf1) should have yourdomainname.com as name and the second one (v=DKIM1) should have “default_.domainkey” as a name. Replace yourdomainname.com with your current domain name.
Step 3: Adding Email Accounts
It’s time to create an email account, go back to the email hosting DirectAdmin panel and click: E-mail Manager > E-mail Accounts > Create Account. Once that’s completed, you can now send and receive email messages to and from that newly created account.
Step 4: Email Clients
These email hosting accounts offer three different web email clients known as Webmails, these are: CrossBox, Rainloop and the most popular one: Roundcube.
With these Webmails you can check, send and receive email messages online without installing an email client on your devices but if you want to manage your email accounts through email clients from your phone, tablet or desktop, you can do that by adding your email account address, password, incoming server and outgoing server, this servers addresses are: mail.yourdomainname.com, no matter the protocol: IMAP,POP3 and SMTP.
Conclusion:
Quite simple, right? I hope you find this post useful and helped you to set up your dedicated email hosting account. If for some reason things go different on your end, Web Horizon Support team will assist you right away. Don’t forge to check WebHorizon KVM/OVZ/NAT/Email deals.