Email accounts
Create mailboxes and forwarders on a WordPress Cloud domain, set spam thresholds and out-of-office replies, and find the IMAP, POP and SMTP settings.
WordPress Cloud hosts mailboxes on your own domains, with Roundcube webmail and standard IMAP, POP and SMTP access. Applies to production websites.
Staging sites cannot have mailboxes. If Emails reports "No websites exist", the only sites you own are staging — see Staging sites.
Open a production website and select Emails, or use Emails in the left navigation to work across all your sites.
Add a mailbox
- Select Add account.
- Enter the part before the
@, and pick the domain. - Tick Make this email address a catch-all only if you want it to receive mail addressed to any name at that domain.
The rest of the form appears once the address is filled in:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Mailbox | A real mailbox with storage. Counted against your package's mailbox allowance |
| Forwarder-only | No storage — mail is passed straight on. Usually unlimited |
| Mailbox size | The quota, 10 GB by default |
| Full name | Shown as the sender's display name |
| Password | Same complexity rules as elsewhere; use the key icon to generate one |
Choose Forwarder-only for addresses like info@ or sales@ that just relay
to a person. They do not consume a mailbox and there is no second inbox to
check.
A catch-all address receives everything sent to any name at the domain, including the large volume of mail addressed to guessed names. Set one up only if you have a reason to, and expect to filter it.
Manage a mailbox
Use the row menu → Manage.
- Mailbox — sender name, quota and usage, and a password Reset.
- Forwarders — store the message and forward a copy to other addresses.
- Catch-all — turn the catch-all behaviour on or off after the fact.
- Spam settings — see below.
- Out of office — an automatic reply.
- Email client settings — the connection details.
Convert to forwarder-only, top right, turns a mailbox into a forwarder and frees the mailbox slot.
The row menu also offers Disable, which stops the mailbox without destroying it, and Permanently delete, which does destroy it along with its stored mail.
Spam settings
Three thresholds, each a spam score from strict to permissive:
| Setting | Default | What happens above the threshold |
|---|---|---|
| Spambox | 4 | Delivered to the Spam folder, visible in webmail and IMAP |
| Reject | 8 | Refused outright; the sender gets a non-delivery receipt |
| Greylist | 6 | Temporarily deferred; genuine servers retry after five minutes |
Lowering Reject is the setting that loses mail silently from your point of view — rejected messages never reach the Spam folder. If legitimate mail is going missing, raise Reject first and let the Spam folder do the work.
Out of office
Add creates an automatic reply for the mailbox. Remove it when you return — an auto-reply left running answers every message, including newsletters and mailing lists.
Connect a mail client
| Protocol | Server | Port | Encryption |
|---|---|---|---|
| IMAP | mail.example.com | 993 | SSL/TLS |
| POP | mail.example.com | 995 | SSL/TLS |
| SMTP | mail.example.com | 465 | SSL/TLS |
| SMTP | mail.example.com | 587 | STARTTLS |
Replace example.com with your own domain. The username is the full email
address, not the part before the @ — this is the single most common reason a
client refuses to connect.
Prefer IMAP over POP unless you have a specific reason not to: IMAP keeps mail on the server so every device sees the same mailbox, while POP downloads and, by default, removes it.
Webmail
Webmail on the Email accounts page opens Roundcube. Sign in with the full email address and the mailbox password.
Deliverability
Getting mail accepted takes more than a working mailbox. Enable DKIM for the domain and check your SPF record — see Domains, DNS and mail routing and the Email section.