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Mailspace: email hosting for your domains

Mailspace is CloudPress's mailbox hosting. It gives a domain real mailboxes that people sign into and read mail from — plus the addressing built around them: aliases, groups, mailing lists and masked addresses. A mailspace belongs to the workspace, not to a WordPress site, and you don't need a site to have one.

This page explains what a mailspace is, how to tell it apart from a site's Transactional Email, what you'll find inside one, and which guide in this section to read next.

Mailspace is not Transactional Email

CloudPress has two separate email features, and they solve opposite problems. Picking the wrong one is the most common mix-up here, so start with this table.

Mailspace Transactional Email
What it's for Mailboxes people use — reading and sending mail as you@yourdomain.com Mail a WordPress site sends by itself: password resets, order confirmations, form notifications
Scope The whole workspace, attached to a domain A single site
Where to find it Mailspace in the workspace sidebar Transactional Email in that site's own sidebar, with Overview, DNS Setup and Log Search under it
What you manage Mailboxes, aliases, groups, mailing lists, masked emails, mail rules, out-of-office Whether the site can send, and the DNS records that let it

If your site can't send password-reset email, you need Transactional Email

That mail comes from WordPress itself, so a mailspace will not fix it — a site with no mailspace at all can still send it, and a site with one can still fail to. Open the site, then Transactional Email in the site sidebar. Ordering a mailspace for that domain is the wrong move and will not change the site's sending at all.

Nothing stops you having both: mailboxes for the people at your company, and transactional sending for the site. They are configured independently and neither depends on the other.

Finding Mailspace

Look for Mailspace in the workspace sidebar (the left-hand vertical nav). It opens the mailspace list, headed Mailspace with the subtitle Manage your mailboxes and domains.

If that sidebar item isn't there at all, mail hosting isn't switched on for the dashboard — this is a platform-level setting, not something enabled per workspace, so there's nothing you can toggle yourself. Get in touch and we'll check. Reaching a Mailspace URL directly in that state just returns you to the dashboard with Mailspace is not configured.

With no mailspaces yet the list shows No Mailspace accounts yet and a Set Up Mailspace button; New Mailspace sits at the top of the list either way. See Ordering a Mailspace for the purchase itself.

What the list tells you

Each row shows the Account name, the Domain, the Package, and a Usage bar for mail storage. The button at the end of the row changes with the mailspace's state, and a badge explains why:

Badge What it means The row's button
(none) Working normally Manage — opens the mailspace
Awaiting verification The mailspace exists, but we haven't confirmed you control the domain yet, so it hasn't been created on the mail server Verify domain — see Verifying your domain
DNS setup needed The domain's DNS isn't ours, and its mail records need setting at your own DNS provider Manage
Over storage Mail is using more storage than the plan includes. Storage is a soft limit — your mail is still being delivered Manage
Suspended Mail is held, either by us or by an unpaid invoice. Every page of that mailspace shows the reason instead of the usual screens Details — where the reason and any payment prompt live
Pending deletion Scheduled for deletion, with the purge time shown beside it. Nothing in it can be changed until it's restored Restore and Delete now — see Deleting and restoring a mailspace

A mailspace that hasn't finished being created doesn't have an overview page yet; opening it sends you to the verification flow instead.

Inside a mailspace

Manage opens the mailspace's own Overview, and its sidebar is the map of everything a mailspace contains:

Section What lives there
Overview The dashboard described below
Mailboxes The real accounts — IMAP/SMTP access and a webmail login each. See Managing mailboxes
Aliases Extra addresses that deliver to a mailbox, group or mailing list
Mailing Lists Managed distribution lists that members subscribe to
Groups Distribution lists that forward incoming mail to several members
Domains The domains configured for sending and receiving mail in this mailspace
Masked Emails Disposable addresses that forward to a mailbox — one per site or service, to keep spam contained
Logs Delivery history: mail received, mail sent, mail still in flight, and failures
Deleted Emails Deleted mail the server still holds, so it can be restored
Settings Mail Rules, Out of Office, Manage account and Resize

Several of those sections have a guide of their own:

The Overview page

The overview is the mailspace's front page (its header is titled Overview, with a Webmail button and New Mailbox beside it). It's assembled live from the mail server each time you load it, so the figures are current rather than cached:

  • Four counters across the top — Mailboxes, Groups, Domains and Mailing Lists — each with a Manage link to that section. The mailbox counter reads as used-of-allowed.
  • Recent Mailboxes — the first five mailboxes, with their Email and Display Name, or an invitation to create your first one.
  • Delivery Log — the most recent delivery attempts, with Status, From, To and Date. The card shows only a handful; View All opens the full history under Logs.
  • Delivery Failures — anything that bounced or is still retrying, marked Permanent or Temporary, so a broken address doesn't stay invisible.
  • Mail Authentication — a live check of the primary domain's mail DNS, loaded a moment after the rest of the page because it has to query DNS. A DNS Records button opens the page with the exact records and values. A record that's present but wrong is reported as wrong, not as a pass.
  • Package — the plan name, storage used against what the plan includes, mailboxes used against what it allows, and an Upgrade Package button.
  • Connection Info — the details for setting a mail app up by hand: Incoming (IMAP, which syncs mail across devices; POP3, which downloads to one device) and Outgoing (SMTP, which sends your mail), each with its server name and ports. The username is your full email address and the password is the mailbox password. Most apps configure themselves and never need this — see Connecting a mail client.

Webmail needs a DNS record

The Webmail button opens webmail on your own domain. Until that hostname's DNS record exists the button tells you so instead of opening — the same records the Mail Authentication card checks.

Billing and permissions

Mail is sold on an annual term only; plan cards are priced per year and there is no monthly option. A resize goes through Settings → Resize (or the Upgrade Package button) and is charged as a change to the existing subscription. Anyone who can open the mailspace can look at that page, but starting the change needs the billing role in the workspace: without it Request change is refused with You do not have permission to manage billing for this workspace. For how subscriptions, invoices and proration work generally, see Billing.

Changing anything — creating or editing mailboxes, aliases, groups, lists or domains, running a DNS check, deleting or restoring — needs edit permission on the workspace; without it the dashboard sends you back to the list with You do not have permission to perform this action. Deleting a mailspace additionally asks you to confirm your identity with your passkey or password, if you haven't recently.

Over the API

Mailspaces can be listed, viewed, ordered, resized and deleted over the REST API. The dashboard and the API are not identical — most notably, the dashboard's checkout can register a brand-new domain as part of the mail order, while the API requires a domain that already exists somewhere. See Mailspace for routes, parameters, response shapes and error codes.

Next steps