Connect your cPanel-hosted mailbox

Your office sends and reads e-mail through your own business mailbox — never a shared address, and never without your approval. This page takes you from nothing to a working cPanel-hosted mailbox.

Everything here is the same information the Need help? drawer on the Connectors page shows you, drawn from the same place, so the two can never disagree.

What you need

• The full e-mail address of the mailbox your office should send from, and the ability to sign in to it.
• The mailbox’s own sign-in password — this provider issues no separate app password for it.
• Your business postal address, and the reason you are allowed to write to the people your office will contact. The form asks for both before it will let you save, so have them to hand — see “Finish the form, in this order” below.

Getting your password

1. Log in to cPanel, open “Email Accounts” (Email section), find this mailbox, and click “Connect Devices” (some hosts label it “Set Up Mail Client”).
2. That page shows this mailbox’s actual server hostname and port — every cPanel host runs its own mail server, so there is no single hostname that works for all of them; copy the exact values shown there rather than the generic ports in the next section.
3. Use the full email address as the username and the mailbox’s own password (cPanel hosting does not use a separate app-password scheme).

The settings to enter

On the Connectors page, find Email connector. The button that opens the form reads Advanced: SMTP / IMAP if you have never connected a mailbox, and Change connector if one is already connected — both open the same form, and the form itself is headed SMTP / IMAP.

There is no single mail server name for a cPanel-hosted mailbox — every hosting company runs its own mail server, so the name to type is the one your own control panel showed you in the steps above. Do not guess it, and do not copy one from another business: a wrong name either fails to connect or warns you about a certificate.

Setting	SMTP (outgoing)	IMAP (incoming, optional)
Port	587 (or 465)	993
Username	The mailbox’s full e-mail address	The same full e-mail address
Password	The mailbox’s own sign-in password	The same password

Encryption: STARTTLS (587, modern) or SSL (465, older clients) for outgoing mail, SSL/TLS for incoming. Leave Use TLS ticked on both halves of the form.

The outgoing fields are labelled SMTP host, Port, Use TLS, Username and Password. Incoming mail is optional: tick Also configure IMAP (optional) to reveal IMAP host, IMAP port, Use TLS, Username and Password. Your office can send without it, but it can only read replies once incoming mail is set up.

Finish the form, in this order

The mail settings above are not the whole form. Two more answers are required before it will save, and two buttons finish the job:

1. Confirm your business postal address. Required by law on business e-mail, not by us — it appears at the bottom of everything your office sends.
2. Choose your legal basis for contacting these people. Pick the option that matches how you got your contacts. The form says so itself: most small businesses choose “They are a potential customer for our business”, and that is the default rather than a requirement.
3. Save connector. If saving does nothing, the postal address is the field to check first — an empty one blocks the save and the page says so above the box. (Your legal basis cannot block it: the form starts with an option already chosen.)
4. Test connection. Until you do, the mailbox reads Waiting for verification: drafts still work, but sending needs it.

Good to know

• The ports above (587/993) are the common cPanel defaults, but the hostname is unique to your hosting account — always confirm it via “Connect Devices” rather than guessing mail.yourdomain.com, which is a common default but not universal.
• If your host uses SSL certificates that do not match mail.yourdomain.com, “Connect Devices” will show the correct alternate hostname to avoid a certificate warning.

Where these settings come from

Every fact on this page was checked on 2026-08-04 against the documentation cPanel or another web host publishes itself. Providers do move these things. If what you see on screen no longer matches what is written here, their own pages are the authority:

• https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/email/how-to-find-email-settings/

Still stuck? The Connectors page has a Need help? button, and inside it a Still stuck? Ask the CEO button that hands the question to your CEO, naming the provider you were reading about.