Email Hosting

Who is email hosting the right choice for?

Email hosting is the right choice for businesses that want a professional email address but do not need enterprise features such as shared calendars, long-term archiving or managing hundreds of users. Typical users are:

• Small businesses and shops: teams that want a handful of addresses such as info@, orders@ or accounts@ to give customers confidence.
• Freelancers and consultants: people who want to write from their own domain instead of a personal Gmail or Outlook.com address.
• Sites hosted elsewhere: owners whose website runs on a platform or a separate server and who want email on a simple, independent service.
• Teams separating hosting and email: anyone who does not want mail to be affected when the site is migrated, rebuilt or taken offline after an attack.

If your team is growing and needs shared calendars, long-term archiving and larger quotas, business email or LIONFIN’s own platform, xMail, may be a better fit.

What is included in the email hosting plans?

LIONFIN email hosting plans include every core component you need for email on your own domain; the plans differ in the number of accounts, the quota per account and a few extra features.

• Accounts on your domain: create as many addresses as your plan allows, each with its own password.
• IMAP, POP3 and SMTP access: connect Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail and the iPhone and Android mail apps over standard protocols.
• Roundcube webmail: reach your mail from any browser without installing anything.
• Spam and virus filtering: incoming mail is scanned before it reaches your inbox and suspicious messages are set aside.
• Auto-reply: out-of-office replies for holidays and leave are included in the mid-range and top plans.
• Daily backup: on the most comprehensive plan, mailboxes are backed up every day.

Which feature is in which plan, and the quota per account, are shown on the plan cards on this page. We do not repeat the numbers here because plan contents can be improved over time and the plan table is always the accurate source.

How do you set up IMAP, POP3 and SMTP?

To add an email hosting account to a mail program, enter IMAP or POP3 as the incoming server and SMTP as the outgoing server; we recommend the encrypted ports for a secure connection. The standard values are:

The unencrypted ports 143 (IMAP) and 110 (POP3) may also be available, but we advise against them so your password is never sent across the network in plain text. The username is always the full email address. If you work on more than one device, choose IMAP; POP3 only makes sense when you want to archive mail on a single computer.

How do you connect your domain to email hosting?

To connect your domain to email hosting, change the MX record in its DNS zone so it points to the LIONFIN mail server; you do not need to touch your website’s A record. That way your site can run in one place and your mail in another.

1. Enter the domain you will use for email when you order the plan.
2. If your name servers are with LIONFIN, the MX and related records are created automatically; if you use another DNS provider, enter the MX value shown on the service screen of the customer panel at that provider.
3. Add the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records as TXT records (see the next section).
4. Create your accounts in the panel and add them to your devices.
5. Wait for the DNS change to propagate; how long this takes depends on the TTL of the previous records.

Do not close the accounts at your old provider straight away: until propagation is complete, some mail may still land on the old server. If you do not have a domain yet, you can register one with LIONFIN first.

Why have SPF, DKIM and DMARC become mandatory?

SPF, DKIM and DMARC are three DNS records that prove to receiving servers that your mail really comes from your domain; without them your messages can land in spam or not be delivered at all. In recent years the big mailbox providers have made these records mandatory for bulk senders, and they check smaller senders more and more strictly too.

• SPF: lists which servers may send mail on behalf of your domain. Example format: v=spf1 include:... ~all. There must be only one SPF record; adding a second one breaks validation.
• DKIM: adds a cryptographic signature to outgoing mail, which the recipient verifies with the public key in your DNS.
• DMARC: tells the recipient what to do if SPF or DKIM fails (p=none, quarantine, reject) and where to send reports.

Our recommendation: set up SPF and DKIM correctly first, then start DMARC with p=none, watch the reports and tighten the policy afterwards. The values for these records are shown in the customer panel, specific to your service.

Email hosting or the email in your web hosting plan?

The email that comes with a hosting plan is fine for small, single-site projects; but if you want email to run independently of your website, with its own quota and its own security policy, separate email hosting is the healthier option. The differences:

• Shared resources: in a hosting plan, site files, databases and mailboxes share the same disk and resource allowance. As mailboxes grow, the site has less room.
• Independence: separate email hosting is not affected when the site is migrated, rebuilt or suspended for malware clean-up.
• Reputation: on a shared web server, another compromised site sending spam can damage the server’s IP reputation; a separate mail platform reduces that risk.
• Flexibility: when you move your site to WordPress hosting or a VPS, your mail stays where it is.

If your website sends form notifications or order emails, consider SmartHost SMTP relay for that outgoing traffic; keeping the mailboxes people write from apart from automated application mail protects deliverability. If you are weighing up running your own mail server, see SMTP relay or your own SMTP server.

How do you choose the right email hosting plan?

The right email hosting plan covers slightly more accounts than you need today and a year’s growth of your busiest mailbox. Ask yourself:

1. How many addresses do you need? Count shared addresses such as info@, support@ or billing@ as well as personal ones. Forwarding shared addresses to existing mailboxes reduces the account count.
2. How fast does your biggest mailbox grow? Accounting, sales and design teams who work with attachments fill their mailboxes quickly. The quota per account is shown on the plan card.
3. Do you need auto-reply and daily backup? These features are not in every plan; compare the feature lists on the plan cards.
4. Do you need calendars, archiving and an SLA? If so, look at the business email or xMail plans instead of email hosting.

When a quota fills up, new mail is no longer accepted and the sender receives an error; starting one tier up rather than on a plan at its limit usually causes fewer problems.

How do you move your existing email?

To move mail from another provider to email hosting, open the old and new accounts side by side over IMAP and copy the folders across; then change the MX record. The recommended order for a seamless switch:

1. Create accounts with the same addresses at LIONFIN.
2. Copy the mail from the old account to the new one over IMAP. For small mailboxes you can add both accounts to Outlook or Thunderbird and drag the folders across yourself.
3. If there are many or very large mailboxes, open a support ticket; our team will plan the migration details with you.
4. Change the MX record and keep the old account open while the change propagates.
5. After a few days, check the old account one last time, move any remaining mail, then close the old service.

With older accounts used over POP3, which download mail to a computer and delete it from the server, some messages may exist only on that computer; to move them you need your mail program’s export feature.

How do you keep your email hosting accounts secure?

The foundation of email hosting security is strong, unique passwords, encrypted connections and correct DNS records; spam and virus filtering complements that foundation, it does not replace it. The rules we recommend:

• Give each account a password of at least twelve characters that is not used anywhere else, and keep it in a password manager.
• Use only the encrypted ports (993, 995, 465, 587) in mail programs; on public Wi-Fi an unencrypted connection can give your password away.
• Change the password of a departing employee on the same day and, if needed, forward the mailbox to a manager.
• Verify emails asking for invoice payments, changed bank details or urgent transfers through a second channel; most phishing attacks look like this.
• Check the messages the spam filter sets aside now and then, and mark legitimate mail that was flagged by mistake as trusted.

If one of your accounts is compromised and starts sending spam, outgoing mail may be blocked; in that case change the password immediately and open a support ticket.

What can you do with webmail?

Roundcube webmail is the web interface that lets you sign in to your email hosting account from any browser, without installing software, to read and write mail and organise your mailbox. It is the most practical option when you are away from the office, on a shared computer or on a new device.

• Create folders, move messages and search.
• Keep an address book and save the people you write to often.
• Set up signatures and send from more than one identity (for example info@ and your personal address).
• Use filter rules to sort mail from specific senders into a folder automatically.
• Switch auto-reply on and off, if your plan includes it.

Thanks to IMAP, every change you make in webmail is reflected on your phone and in the mail program on your computer. Remember to sign out after using a shared computer.

How do you use email hosting on phones and computers?

You can use your email hosting account in any app that supports standard IMAP, including iPhone, Android, Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail; no extra app or paid add-on is needed. A few points to watch during setup:

• Do not rely on auto-detection: some apps try to guess the server name and suggest wrong values. Choose IMAP as the account type and enter the incoming and outgoing server details from the customer panel by hand.
• Enable authentication on the outgoing server: the “outgoing server requires authentication” option must be ticked for SMTP, with the same username and password as the incoming server.
• Map the Sent folder: so that mail sent from your phone also appears on your computer, map the app’s “Sent” folder to the Sent folder on the server.
• Take care with old devices: very old mail programs may not support current TLS versions; if you get a connection error, update the app first.

If you get stuck, open a ticket from the Support section of the customer panel and include the exact error message you see. Our data center is monitored 24/7 by NOC and SOC teams; you can read more on our data center page.