Email quickstart guide

Overview

DreamHost now offers Google Workspace, which is a collection of popular apps that help you organize and simplify your personal emails/files or your organization's workflow. Google Workspace plans include email, storage, document editing/sharing, reports, and more. For more information on how to sign up for Google Workspace, see the following article:

One of the best things about having your own domain is that you get to have any personal address you like for that domain which looks more professional than a generic mail address, such as @gmail.com.

Adding an email address takes only a few simple steps which this guide explains. However, if you need further details on other aspects of an email address, please review the Email Client Configuration article.

Prerequisites

You must have an active hosting plan, or a paid email add-on plan to use email.

All hosting plans except Shared Starter offer email for free.

Shared Starter hosting plans and domain registration only accounts do not originally come with email, however, you can add a paid email plan onto your account for up to 5 email addresses. View the following article for further information.

Creating an email address

To create an email address:

  1. Open the Manage Email page.
    CreateEmailButton.fw.png
  2. Click the Create New Email Address button.
    01 Email Quickstart Guide.fw.png
  3. Enter the following:
    • The desired email address in the first field.
    • Choose the domain you’d like to add it to from the dropdown list.
    02 Email Quickstart Guide.fw.png
  4. Enter a name for the mailbox (this can be your name or something to describe the purpose of the mailbox).
    03 Email Quickstart Guide.fw.png
  5. Check the box to generate a password (or enter one of your own choosing if you prefer).
  6. There are other fields such as 'Limit total disk usage', but you do not need to adjust these to create the address. If you'd like to read more about those settings, view the following article:
    03 Email Quickstart Guide.fw.png
  7. Click the Create Address button. A success message appears confirming that the address has been added.

You're now ready to configure your email client and start sending and receiving mail.

To quickly find your email settings in the panel, open the Manage Email page and look for the Email Setup Info link in the upper right. Click the text to open the quick-access instructions for your email address:

Incoming
imap.dreamhost.com
pop.dreamhost.com
Outgoing
smtp.dreamhost.com

Logging into your email address

There are two ways to log into your email address.

  • Webmail
  • Email client

Webmail

Webmail is the easiest option to log into your your email address. Just visit the following link to log in.

You can read more about webmail at the following link:

Email client

An email client (Mac Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, iPhone, Android) offers you more control over managing your email but requires you to manually configure it first. The following articles guide you through the general configuration process.

View the following section for a list of the most common email clients:

Possible errors

The steps above assume your DNS is hosted with DreamHost. If you have custom MX records in place for a domain, you will not be able to create new addresses. This is because if you are using Gmail, (or another alternative mail provider), you must create new email addresses at that provider.

Another issue to be aware of is that sometimes when you have a large number of addresses already created, you get an error message that says:

“Your account cannot create additional e-mail addresses at this time. 

This is usually a temporary situation and should be resolved within 24 hours.

Please contact Support if you have any questions.”

In the event you get this message, please contact support.

See also

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Article last updated PST.

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