Knowledgebase

Email issues are normal. They range from login related issues to email bounces. This guide will provide you with a complete guide to troubleshoot and resolve your email issues. After reading this tutorial, you will be able understand the following:

1. Common email problems
2. How to login to webmail
3. Why You May Have Difficulty With Email Login
4. How to resolve trouble with logging into webmail
5. What are email bounces and how to resolve them

Further reading:

Webmail Programs in CPanel

Managing the Mail Function in CPanel

Common Email Problems

Most of the email problems include login issues, email bounces, problems with sending and receiving emails. In most cases, these problems are reported by clients who already were using the webmail client and not clients who have never logged into the email client before. Let us proceed with the first problem - login issues with email.

Also read: Email Error Messages - What Do They Mean and How to Fix Them

How to Login to Webmail

There are two major ways through which you can access your emails. The first is through the client area section on Todhost and the second is by logging in with your email username and password. We will look at both methods and how they can be used.

How to Access Emails Through Todhost Client Area

This is the simplest and recommended way to access your emails. It requires you to only remember your client area login details. Accessing your emails through the Todhost client area does not require you to remember your email login credentials.

Here are the steps required:

1. Login to the Todhost client area using the login credentials. You can reset your login password if you have lost it.
2. Once you have successfully logged in, navigate to services > My Services.
3. Click on the green active button corresponding to the domain whose email you wish to check.
4. Navigate to Quick Shortcuts and click on Email Accounts. That will present to you, a list of email addresses you have created.
5. Locate the email address you wish to access and click Check Email.

Email Clients

Traditionally, in cPanel, you should have the Horde and the RoundCube email clients. They are both good and will serve your purposes. You want to check their features and set as default any one you feel comfortable with.

Further reading:

Webmail Programs in CPanel

How to configure Email Client

How to Access Emails Through Direct Access

To access emails directly through the cPanel webmail client, you need to be able to login to webmail. To do this, you will require a username and password. The username is the email address written in full and the password will be the password you entered while creating the email account. To change the password for an email, you need access to the cPanel control panel or you can also make the changes by following the procedure outlined in the previous section by accessing the Todhost client area.

Here are the steps involved in access your email account:

1. Access your website via www.yourdomainname.com/webmail. Remember to replace "yourdomainname.com" with your actual domain name.
2. Enter your email in full, that is, xyz@yourdomainname.com and enter the correct email password. If you have forgotten the password, you will need to reset it. If you do not know how to reset it, you can contact the Todhost customer support or via Livechat.
3. Once you have entered the right credentials, you should be able to access your email account.

Frequent Logout Problems

There are cases where you are frequently logged out after successfully logging in to webmail or cPanel. The most common cause of this is that your connection IP address changed and so you will require fresh authentication. There are few things you can do to address this.

1. Change your internet connection to an ISP that does not change your connection IP once you are logged in.
2. Contact your ISP to provide you with a static IP instead of using an ISP that runs on dynamic IP. In most cases, this will be a business internet solution that will require you to pay more.
3. Contact your web hosting provider and lodge the complaint. They will be able to disable Cookie IP validation on server under Tweak Setting > Securities. The server will then ignore IP changes on your internet connection.

Further reading:

How to fix error 550 no such user here

How to Backup My Website in cPanel

Why You May Have Difficulty With Email Login

There are a couple of reasons you can have some difficulty with accessing your email.

• You have had multiple failed login and your connection IP has been blocked by the server firewall.
• You have mistyped the email address or entered a wrong password.
• Access to the email address may have been blocked on server by a server admin
• You may be resident in a country that has a high spam attack record on servers and have been restricted. This is a practice adopted by server managers when their clients are resident within a particular country though visitors may be coming from other countries. If spam emails or brute force attacks are detected to be emanating from countries that are not being served or where clients are not located, some server managers will prefer to restrict access to prevent incoming spam from harming the reputation of the server IP.

How to resolve trouble with logging into webmail

• You have had multiple failed login and your connection IP has been blocked by the server firewall. To resolve this, simply wait for 30 minutes before attempting another login. You should be able to login provided your login credentials are correct. If you still cant access the email, contact the customer support of your web hosting company..
• You have mistyped the email address or entered a wrong password. To resolve this problem, carefully retype the email address you wish to check.
• Access to the email address may have been blocked on the server by a server admin. To address this problem, contact the server admin for your account.
• You are resident in a country that has a high spam attack record on servers and has been restricted. The solution is to contact your web host via customer support and request that your connection IP address should be whitelisted or the country where you are resident be removed from the blocklist.

Email Sending Problems

If you are having problems with sending emails and you can access the email account to be sure you are not limited by any blocks, then you need to take some steps to resolve this issue. If the problem persists, you need to contact your hosting provider.

Now, here are the basic checks you need to perform:

• Check to ensure that the email you are sending to is not mistyped.
• Check to ensure that the receiving email account is under any block, restriction or blacklist.
• If you receive a bounce back email, read the lines carefully to locate the reason for the bounce or delivery failure.
• Check your domain name status to be sure it is not under any restriction or blacklist.

Email Bounce Back Problems and How to Resolve Them

There are two types of email bounces — a soft bounce and a hard bounce.

Soft Bounce

A soft bounce means that the email address is valid and was delivered to the recipient’s inbox, but it still bounced because the mailbox was full, the server was down, or the message was too large for the recipient’s inbox.

Hard Bounce

A hard bounce happens when the email is permanently rejected because the email address is invalid or the email address doesn’t exist.

Now that you understand the two basic types of email bounces, you can now better address the issue or provide your web hosting support with the right information to address the issue.

General Causes of Email Bounces

Lets explore in greater detail the specific causes of email bounce and how to address them.

• Maximum emails per hour has been exceeded. There is a maximum number of emails a server can send hourly. Once this limit is reached, the server will not process further email sending requests. That means you will experience bounces. This situation can be worsened by forwarders or by mailing lists. The suggestion is to wait for at least one hour before attempting to resend failed emails. Feel free to contact us via phone or live chat if you would like this limit to be increased. Please include detailed information regarding why you need the limit increased.
• Disk quota reached. In some cases, emails are allocated a quota. Some web hosting accounts also run on a disk quota. Once this limit is reached or exceeded for the email account, it cannot send or receive mails anymore.
• Email server is down. Exim, the local MTA (mail transfer agent), could be down on the server. This will affect email functionality.
• Backed up email queues. Our mail proxy servers could have their email queues backed up. When this happens, please be patient as there will be a delay of 3-4 hours before the email is delivered.
• Mistyped email address. Sometimes, an email address is mistyped causing a bounce back. This is easy to correct as the bounced back email header will tell you that the email you have attempted to send your mail to does not exist. When you receive such notification, you will simply need to check the email address and make the necessary corrections.

• Receiving Server Blacklist. You will be unable to send emails to a server that has been blacklisted for spamming.

• Sending Server Blacklist. You will not be able to send emails from a server that has been blacklisted for spamming. The solution is to check with the blacklisting organization and follow their recommended procedures to remove the block.

• Non-Existent Emails. This occurs under certain conditions::

  1. The domain name to which the email was directed has expired and has not been renewed. As a result the domain DNS could have been redirected to another server address or deleted. In such cases, all emails created with that domain name ceases to function.
  2. The mail belonged to an employee who has left the organization and so his email has been deleted.
  3. The email has been inactive or unused for a long time and deleted by the email server for inactivity.

• Undeliverable email. If bounced emails are in the “Undeliverable” category, that means that the receiving email server is temporarily unavailable, was overloaded, or couldn’t be found.

• Blocked email. If the email addresses are placed within the “Blocked” category, the receiving server has blocked the incoming email. This is often the case among government institutions or schools, where servers can be more strict when it comes to receiving emails. To resolve this issue, you need to get in touch with the contact and request that their system administrators unblock the IP addresses.

Further reading:

How to fix error 550 no such user here

How to Solve Email Bounce Back Issues

How to Fix Email Deliverability Problems

How to remove a server from a blacklist

First, check the status of your website to understand its true reputation. Check Here

The removal process is as follows:

1. First ensure that your server is no longer open relay. Make sure that the server is configured properly and protected from any exploitation.

2. Next, determine which open relay black lists the server is listed on..

3. Finally, go to the web sites of each Blacklist provider and use their web site to submit your site for testing.  The process would vary.  You will have to follow the processes if you want to be removed from any blacklists because databases often share IP addresses that have been listed. Once you've fixed things on your end, go back to the blacklist's site and follow their instructions for the IP address removal process.

Final Words

Email login issues and dealing with email related problems are issues you will always encounter as a website owner. There are several reasons you will experience these problems ranging from a temporary downtime, some other server problem, a blacklist resulting from spamming, a website suspension, a mistyped email address, a connection IP block resulting from several failed login and some other issues.

If your email issue is related to failed login, we recommend you check the login credentials and try again.. If you receive a bounce back, we suggest you carefully read through the lines of the bounced email to understand the reason for the bounce.

You need to understand that not all email problems are associated with the originating servers. Many are also linked to the destination server so before you blame your web host, you need to understand the cause of a delivery failure.