In order to receive any mail sent to any address at your domain, you and your users will need to use a mail program such as Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail or any one of dozens of available mail clients on the Internet. On the pages that follow, we will look at setting up the main 'big three' mail clients, Outlook Express, Netscape Mail and Eudora. First some general information:

When you open an account with us, by default we set up a catch-all mailbox for email to your domain(s). This ensures that no email is lost while your domain transfers. The catch-all mailbox name is usually the same as your main account username. If you are happy for <anything>@yourdomain.com to be directed at a single mailbox for collection then you can leave things like this, and this is what many of our customers do.

However, some customers will have more complex email requirements and will wish to set up separate POP3 mailboxes and/or mail forwarders for different addresses on their domain(s). To do this you need to log into your web-based mail admin system that we provide with all accounts. This can be accessed by adding /admin/ to your URL. For example: http://www.mydomain.com/admin/

If your domain has not yet transferred to our service, then you can still access your email admin system by using the temporary URL we mention in your welcome mail and appending /admin to that. For example: http://myusername.boson.posiweb.net/admin/

The mail admin system has built-in help on how to use the various features plus screen shots for setting up Oulook Express.

If you are collecting your email from a mailbox on our servers (i.e. you aren't using mail forwarding) there are four basic pieces of information required to configure any mail software to pick up your email. Different email software applications may give these varying names, but all will be similar. In the following example, we will pretend your username is 'fred' and your domain name is 'example.com'. Obviously you should swap these for your own username and domain.

1) Incoming Mail Server (POP3 Mail Server)

In the case of our mail system, the mail server name you should use to collect email from is:

mail.example.com.

NOTE: this is only for receiving email, for sending outgoing email you should use the SMTP server provided by your Internet Service Provider.

2) POP3 Username

POP3 usernames on our mail system MUST include your full domain name. The username is in the following special format:

username@domainname

So, in the case of a user account called "fred" for the domain name "example.com" the username will be:

fred@example.com

3) POP3 Password

The POP3 password is the easy bit! That is set up from your email administration pages and can be changed from there if desired.

NOTE: your default mailbox will have the same password as your main account login, but can of course be changed via the mail admin system.

4) Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP Mail Server)

Your mail software will also usually expect an SMTP mail server for outgoing email. This should be set to your Internet Service provider's SMTP mail server and you should ask them for the necessary details. it is entirely correct and normal to use your ISP's outgoing mail server, as only they can verify and authenticate your connection (since you are dialed up via them) and so protect against mail server abuse by spammers. To offer an outgoing mail service we would have to operate an 'open relay' mail system (that is, one open to all IP address ranges) and this would rapidly be exploited by spammers.