If you have a domain name email address (such as someone @ example.com where example.com is your website domain name), then most likely your web host will have an webmail facility for you to check your emails. That is fine. However, many people prefer to use an "email client". An email client is a software on your computer that will access your emails on your webserver and then downloads them to your computer. One well known email client is Microsoft Outlook (but it can be expensive to buy). Often the free Microsoft Outlook Express comes with your Windows operating system.
Alternatively, you can install free open-source email client such as Mozilla Thunderbird. In this tutorial, we will show you how to set up Mozilla Thunderbird to access your domain email from your webserver. The method of accessing the mail is called "POP access".
1. After installing Thunderbird and when you run it for the first time, Thunderbird's Account Wizard will ask you some configuration question. It may ask if you want the Import Wizard to import anything. Here we'll say "no".
2. When it ask what type of account you would like to set up, pick "Email account"
3. In the identity screen, it will ask for you to provide your name and email address that you are setting up. The name you type here (such as Joe Smith) will be the name displayed to the recipient when the email account is used to send and reply to emails.
4. In the next screen, it asks for server information.
This information you can can get from your webhost's control panel. For this example, we logged into the control panel of hostmonster and click on "email accounts".
5. Then find the email account that we are trying to download and click "Configure Email Client".
6. We will configure Thunderbird to use SSL for email download and sending because is more secure. So we note the information under the "Manual Settings" section shown below as provided by our webhost.
7. Now that we have that server information from our webhost cpanel, type that into Thunderbird's Server Information screen...
Note that we have selected "POP" as the method of downloading mail.
8. The next screen in Thunderbird's Account Wizard asks for the "Incoming User Name". This was also provided in the webhost cpanel as shown below.
9. The next screen in Thunderbird's Account Wizard asks to enter "Account Name". This is just an arbitrary name that you choose. We'll just leave it the account name to be the same as the email address.
10. Now you can go to Thunderbird's menu "Tools -> Account Settings" to review the setting and to fill in other configuration settings.
Here I like to fill in the reply-to address...
In the next setting, I change security settings to SSL
Note that the port will change to the "SSL port".
In the Junk setting shown below, you can either enable or disable the junk filtering. To ensure that you get all emails and not have legitimate email get "junked", you can uncheck the "adaptive junk mail controls"....
12. There are a few more setting that you can look through. But for the most part, the default setting would be okay. Except in the "Composition and Addressing" setting, it is typical to change the reply response to start above the quoted response as shown...
13. To save all your settings, click the Okay button at the bottom of the dialog.
14. Now we look at the Outgoing Server settings. Select the outgoing server that was created for your new email account, and click "Edit". If you don't see one, click "Add" to add an outgoing server setting.
Again, change the setting to SSL and the port changes to 465 (which is the same port as mentioned in the "Manual Settings" above. In addition, I also like to fill in the description.
15. Now go back to your account to ensure that the outgoing server is set correctly to the outgoing server settings that you have just modified.
Click "Okay" to save.
16. Now you should be all set. As a test you should send a message to yourself from the email account back to the same email account. Use the "Write" and "Get Mail" icon buttons in Thunderbird. Make sure you can both send and receive messages. If you are sending mail out for the first time using Thunderbird, it will ask for your email password. Again you can have Password manager remember this for you in the future.
Here is a video tutorial on how to setup Thunderbird if your email is on Hostmonster.
