Setting Up Your Email Software for POP Accounts

What is a POP email account?

A POP email account is kind of an electronic post office box. Just like a real life PO Box where you have a box at the post office that collects your postal mail, a POP account is mailbox that is setup on a mail server that collects all the email sent to your email address (you@yourdomain.com).

Instead of driving to the post office and getting your mail out of your PO box, you use an email software like Outlook or Outlook Express to login to your email box (using a username and password) to get your mail out of your box.

Note: Just like a real post office box, if you leave all your mail in your box and never remove it, your box will eventually fill up so you can't receive any more mail. So be sure to set your email settings to remove the mail from your box. In your Incoming email settings be sure to check "Remove Mail From Server". You ca choose to remove it immediately after you download it, or you can leave it on the server for your preference of days. We recommend leaving no more than a few days.

Setting Up your Software to check Your email

If you have a POP account on a TACWeb Mail Server, you just need to set a few things in your email software (i.e.: Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora) to start accessing your email and sending email.

1. Set the Incoming Mail Server.

2. Set the User Name (Account Name)

3. Set the Outgoing Mail Server (same as incoming)

4. Check the "My Server requires Authentication" button

Every software and every computer is a little different, but basically the same. In Outlook Express it's done by going to the "Tools" pull down menu and selecting "Accounts". Click on the "Mail" tab at the top of the screen to show your email account(s). Click the "Add" or "New" button to create a new account.

Or to edit an existing account Double-click on your mail account, or highlight the account in the list and click "change" or "Edit".

Below are the settings summarized which you need to enter.

Your Mail Server Name

The name of your Incoming and Outgoing server are the same as your website domain name, except using the word "mail" instead of "www" in front of the domain name. So if your website address/domian is "www.yourdomain.com" then your mail server sub domain name would be "mail.yourdomain.com". Use that "mail.yourdomain.com" for both Incoming and Outgoing server names. Or as an alternative you can use the TACWeb Incoming and Outgoing server name of "mail.tacweb.com".

Your User Name

Your user name or account name is the same as your email address except using a percent sign (%) instead of the at sign (@). So if your email address is you@yourdomain.com your user name is you%yourdomain.com.

When entering in your password as well as all the server settings, always use lower case letters (NO CAPS) and no spaces or special characters. It's up to you whether you check the box that says "remember my password".

Mail Server Settings:
Incoming (POP) Mail Server:	mail.yourdomain.com or mail.tacweb.com
Outgoing (SMTP) Mail Server:	mail.yourdomain.com or mail.tacweb.com
User Name (Account Name):	you%yourdomain.com (yes, that's a percent sign)
Password:	XXXXXXXXXXXX (enter your password)

Outgoing Mail Server Authentication:

Also please be sure that you check the box down by the Outgoing Server info that says "My server requires authentication". (Do not check the one that says "Secure Authentication", only check the one that says just "My Server requires authentication"). If not already highlighted, you set the authentication to "Use same settings as my Incoming Mail Server".

What is Authentication?

Authentication means that the server needs a username and password to send mail out for someone. This is a precaution most every Internet Service Provider started employing over the past few years to try to stop "spammers" (bulk junk email) from using their mail server to send out email. By requiring Authentication, the server will only accept outgoing mail for our clients with accounts.

Note: Some ISPs block Port 25 - Can't send email?

If you have setup your email account in your email software, and you can receive mail but can't send mail, it's probably your ISP blocking port 25. See our support page, "Changing your outgoing SMTP port number".