Troubleshooting Common Email Issues on cPanel Hosting Platforms

If you are having trouble receiving or sending emails, check if email encryption or forwarding has been enabled.

06:51 08 July 2024

Table of contents

• Identify the issue
• Email delivery problems
• Email connection problems
• Email security
• Storage problems

Identify the issue

Internet service providers sometimes put a limit on how many emails you can send. Then, an overwhelming number of requests come from an account, leading to messages being rejected or stuck in a queue. You need to contact your ISP.

If you are having trouble receiving or sending emails, check if email encryption or forwarding has been enabled. These features could be causing problems with the reception or delivery, and you should disable them.

Email delivery problems

If neither encryption nor forwarding is causing the problem, you need to verify the domain name. This is a critical step in troubleshooting common issues with cPanel hosting. The admin must also verify DNS propagation.

They must make sure the domain name has been properly registered, and DNS records have been propagated. This happens after nameservers or DNS records have changed within cPanel.

They must also update the nameservers associated with the domain and ensure they are pointing towards cPanel.

Webmail and mail exchanger records within cPanel should be configured properly for incoming and outgoing emails.

You should check SPF and DKIM records to confirm the accuracy and proper configuration. 39% of the top one million domains do not have an SPF record. 77% of these don’t have MX records either, meaning they can’t be used for email.

Email connection problem

Troubleshooting this common issue requires knowledge of SMTP, IMAP, and POP3. These protocols are used to establish an email connection. SMTP is only used to send emails. IMAP stores emails remotely. When the recipient opens them, it downloads them on demand. If authorized, the IMAP protocol gets access to the email from any location or device. This has made it the go-to option for most email service providers.

POP3 practically operates independently of the internet connection, which is why many users love it. You can read emails offline because the protocol downloads emails to the local computer from the server. Once the message is retrieved, the server deletes it. This is the default setting. You must adjust the default if you want the server to store the email.

In some cases, a corrupted configuration file or an incorrect server setting can cause the issue. Restoring the original settings might resolve it.

Email security

Ensuring secure authentication involves a strong password, configuring SMTP, and enabling TLS (Transport Layer Security). TLS encrypts emails before they are sent, meaning that you can only read them after they have reached you. This makes it impossible to intercept the emails in transit.

Configuring SMTP allows the sender to authenticate himself, making sure only authorized people can access and send emails through the server.

Enabling antispam within the cPanel interface can help reduce spam emails. While fraud and scams make up just 2.5% of spam emails, identity theft accounts for 73% of that.

Storage problems

If your mailbox is too big, your email account won’t function efficiently. Reduce size by deleting old emails. If you think you might need to access an old email later, archive it. Managing quota settings within cPanel will also help reduce the disk space used by the email account. Keep in mind that some web hosts limit individual mailboxes.

The bottom line

Is hosting on cPanel worth it? Its intuitive interface is one of the biggest benefits of hosting with cPanel. Its graphical user interface lets you manage your site without a technical background. It is very simple to navigate. The licensing costs of cPanel/WHM are significant, but many users and hosting companies find that the efficiency and convenience outweigh the costs. As of 2024, 1,574,668 live websites use cPanel. It has been used by another 2.7 million sites historically. Of the total, 653,516 websites on cPanel are in the US.