Overview
The paid email plan allows you to add email service to your Shared Starter hosting plan, or a domain registration only account.
These types of accounts are originally not configured with email addresses. When you add the paid email plan to your account, you then have the ability to add up to 5 mailboxes and an unlimited number of forward-only email addresses.
Limitations
It's not possible to add a Discussion List or Announcement List to an Email-only account. Both of these services require a domain to be added to a hosting plan.
Billing
You can choose to have the email plan can billed monthly, or annually for up to 5 email addresses.
No refund is available if you decide to cancel your hosting service while retaining a paid email plan. However, DreamHost will provide a prorated credit for any remaining time on the canceled hosting plan, which you can apply to other DreamHost services.
Usage
Each email address allows up to 25GB of disk storage. You can see the usage in your panel next to your mailbox on the Manage Email page.
Adding the email plan to a new account
You can sign up for a new account and email plan at the following link:
From there, proceed through the account creation prompts as shown in the following article:
Adding the email plan in your existing account
- Visit the Manage Email page.
- Click the Get Started button.
- On the next page, select a Monthly or Yearly payment plan.
- Below, choose the number of mailboxes you wish to add.
- When finished, click the Buy Mailboxes Now button.
Your email plan is then added to your account and a welcome email is sent to help get you started. You can proceed with adding addresses using the following article:
Viewing your email plan
You can view the details of your email plan on the Manage Account page.
Canceling the plan
When your paid email plan expires (or you cancel it) and the billing period expires, your email account will be disabled and deleted within 24 hours.
Canceling on the Manage Email page
- Navigate to the Manage Email page.
- On the top right, click the Manage Mail Subscription link.
- On the next page, enter the text DELETE into the text field, then click End Mail Subscription.
Your plan will continue to function until the end date listed on this page.
Canceling on the Manage Account page
You can also cancel on the Manage Account page by clicking the Manage button to the right of the plan. This takes you to the Manage Email page where you can cancel as described above.
No refunds are provided upon cancellation of paid email services.
Un-cancel the plan (if you canceled on the Manage Email page)
If you had previously canceled the plan on the Manage Email page, you can un-cancel it on the same page by clicking the Re-enable Paid Plan button.
- Navigate to the Manage Email page.
- On the top right, click the Manage email subscription button.
- Click Re-Enable Mail Subscription.
Changing your billing plan
You can change your billing plan between Monthly and Yearly in your panel.
- Navigate to the Manage Email page.
- On the top right, click the Manage email subscription link.
- Choose a billing plan.
- Click the Save Changes button to save your new billing plan.
Downgrading your plan
You can downgrade your plan to the current number of email addresses in your panel. For example, if you have 3 addresses and want to downgrade to the 2 address plan, you must delete one of those addresses in your panel first.
- Navigate to the Manage Email page.
- On the top right, click the Manage email subscription link.
- In this screenshot, you can see the plan currently allows for 3 addresses, but only two are being used. In this case, you can click the '2 Mailboxes' option to downgrade to the 2 Mailbox plan.
- Click Save Changes to save the new setting.
Please note that you can only downgrade the number of email addresses to how many are currently set up in your panel.
Upgrading to Unlimited Shared Hosting
You can upgrade your plan to Unlimited Shared Hosting where you'll have an unlimited amount of email addresses. You can read more about Shared Hosting here:
- Navigate to the Manage Email page.
- On the top right, click the Manage email subscription link.
- Click the Unlimited Mail tab.
- Click the View Shared Unlimited Plans button.
- Choose which billing plan you prefer and add it to your account.
Downgrading from Unlimited Hosting to Paid Email only
If you've purchased a Shared, VPS, DreamPress, or Dedicated hosting plan, email is unlimited as part of the plan. However, if you have no need for all of the features available with a full hosting plan, but still wish to use email, you have the following two options:
- Downgrade to a registration-only account with a Paid Email plan
- Downgrade to a Shared Starter plan and add on the Paid Email plan
Downgrading to a registration-only account with a Paid Email plan
If you no longer have a need for a website, you are able to downgrade to a registration-only account with a Paid Email plan. This allows you to continue to use email from your domain without hosting a website online.
To proceed, Contact Support to request your current hosting plan be closed and a Paid Email plan added to it.
Domain registration
DreamHost will not delete your domain registrations when the hosting plan is closed. Any domain registrations previously purchased continue to remain active for the rest of their registration periods. You can continue to log into your panel and manage your domain registrations as you did before.
Downgrade to a Shared Starter plan with a Paid Email plan
If you still have a need for a website but do not need all the features of a full hosting plan, you are able to downgrade to a Shared Starter plan and have a Paid Email plan added to it. Before contacting support, make sure you fall within the limitations mentioned in the following article:
Next, Contact Support to request your current hosting plan be downgraded to Shared Starter with a Paid Email plan added to it.
