How to Create an Email Account in DirectAdmin and Use It in Outlook and on Your Phone

An address like sales@yourbusiness.pk looks more professional than a Gmail address, and every ProWebHosting plan includes email accounts on your own domain. This guide walks through creating the account in DirectAdmin, reading mail in webmail, and adding it to Outlook or a phone, plus the two features most people want next: forwarders and autoresponders.

Create the account in E-mail Manager

Log in to DirectAdmin with the details from your welcome email. If your account has more than one domain, check the domain selector at the top of the page first, because email accounts belong to a specific domain.

Two passwords are now in play, and mixing them up is the most common reason a new mailbox appears not to work. The DirectAdmin password opens the control panel and is never used by a mail app. The mailbox password is the one you just set, and it goes into webmail, Outlook and your phone. If someone forgets theirs, you do not need the old one: open E-mail Accounts, choose the address and set a new password from there.

Choose a quota that fits your plan

The quota is the maximum size of that one mailbox. Email is stored on the same disk as your website, so every mailbox counts against your plan storage. On the Promotional plan with 5 GB in total, three mailboxes of 1 GB each would leave only 2 GB for the website itself.

A practical starting point is 500 MB to 1 GB per person for a small team, and more for accounts that receive attachments all day. You can raise or lower a quota at any time from the E-mail Accounts list without touching the mail already stored. If you would rather keep all mail elsewhere, use a forwarder instead of a mailbox, which is covered further down.

Read mail in webmail

Every DirectAdmin account comes with Roundcube webmail. Open https://yourdomain.com/roundcube in a browser and sign in with the full email address as the username and the password you set. The E-mail Accounts page also shows a login link next to each address, which is the quickest way to check that a new mailbox works.

Webmail is enough for occasional use, a shared info@ address, or checking mail from a computer that is not yours. For daily work most people prefer a mail app, which is what the next section sets up.

Webmail also has a settings area for a signature, the display name people see when you write to them, and a password change for that mailbox only. Setting the display name to your business name rather than the bare address makes your messages look tidier in a client's inbox.

Connect Outlook, the Gmail app and phones

Every mail app asks for the same handful of settings. DirectAdmin creates a mail.yourdomain.com hostname automatically for each domain, so the pattern below works for any address on your account. Replace yourdomain.com with your own domain.

In Outlook, choose the option to set up the account manually and pick IMAP; in the Gmail app on Android, add an account of type Other; on iPhone, go to Settings, Mail, Accounts, Add Account, Other. Enter the values above when the automatic detection fails, which is normal for hosted domains.

If you use Gmail on the web rather than the app, you can still pull the mailbox in. Add it under Accounts and Import as a POP3 account using mail.yourdomain.com on port 995 with SSL, then add the same address as a send-as identity with the SMTP settings above so replies go out from your domain.

One detail matters for the SSL step. The mail server presents a certificate, and if your domain does not yet have its own certificate you may see a name mismatch warning. Enabling the free certificate as shown in our DirectAdmin Let's Encrypt guide removes that warning on most setups.

Forwarders: copy mail to another address

A forwarder sends every message that arrives at one address on to another address, on your domain or elsewhere. It is the right tool when you want info@yourdomain.com to land in your personal Gmail, or when one person should receive mail sent to several addresses.

Open E-mail Manager, then Forwarders, and create a new forwarder. Give it a name (the part before the @) and the destination address. A forwarder does not need a mailbox of its own, so it uses no quota. If a mailbox with the same name already exists, mail is delivered to both the mailbox and the destination.

Autoresponders and vacation messages

DirectAdmin has two related features. An autoresponder, under E-mail Manager, replies to every message sent to an address with a fixed text, for example a confirmation that an order request was received. A vacation message does the same for a date range, and switches off by itself when the range ends.

Write the reply as you would a short email: who received the message, when they can expect a real answer, and an alternative contact such as your WhatsApp number. Both features can be edited or deleted from the same page. Remember to remove a temporary autoresponder once it has done its job, otherwise every message, including spam, gets an answer.

Quick fixes for common email problems

• Webmail says the login is wrong: use the full address as the username and check that the account exists under the correct domain.
• Mail is received but cannot be sent: turn on outgoing server authentication and switch the SMTP port to 465 with SSL, since some mobile networks in Pakistan block port 25.
• Mail bounces with a quota error: empty Trash and Sent in webmail, then raise the quota in E-mail Accounts.
• Mail from your domain lands in spam: check the SPF and DKIM records described in our DirectAdmin DNS guide.
• A new domain receives no mail at all: confirm the domain's MX record points to mail.yourdomain.com and that the nameservers have finished propagating.

Frequently asked questions