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BigBiz FAQ: Email Setup
 
   

How is your account initially set up?

When your account is first opened, all email to your domain (example: webmaster@yourdomain.com) will be forwarded to the email address you specified on your order form, most likely the email address at your ISP. For most users this will be sufficient. However, if you switch ISPs, you will need to use MailSetup to change your forwarding address. MailSetup can also be used to configure BigBiz email services such as POP, ExpressMail, or auto-replies.

The welcome message that is sent when your account is first opened contains important information about your initial configuration. Here is an example welcome message:

E-mail
E-mail to your domain test1.com is initially configured as follows:

- all email to test1.com are forwarded to david@earthlink.net

You can change your configuration at any time using the MailSetup program.

To configure addresses within your domain. Use the web site
https://www.bigbiz.com/MailSetup (secure)
http://www.bigbiz.com/MailSetup (insecure)

What is MailSetup and how do I use it?

MailSetup is a web-based email configuration program. You can use it to change your email forwards, configure new email addresses, setup POP mailboxes and passwords, and much more.

How do I log on to MailSetup?

There are 2 ways to logon to MailSetup: through the link provided in your welcome message or via the BigBiz home page (see the image below). If you enter through the link on the BigBiz home page, you will need to know which server your account has been assigned. If you attempt to enter through another server, you will be denied access.

- Go to the BigBiz home page at http://www.bigbiz.com.

- Select the appropriate server from the list on the MailSetup line.

Once you have selected a server, you will be prompted for a username and password.

- Enter your User Name (it is the full domain name including the .com, .net, etc.).

- Enter your administrative password (included in your welcome message).

- Click OK.

If you have supplied the correct username and password you will see the entry screen for MailSetup:

 

How do I configure my domain's email addresses?

The first option in MailSetup is to configure the email addresses for your domain. Select this option by clicking on the first radio button in the MailSetup entry screen and then clicking the Go button. You will be greeted with a screen like this:

- To create a new email address, simply type in the new username into the text box and press the Create New Address button.

You will be greeted by the email configuration screen (click on the ? for help):

Configuration Name
Enter a show description of this configuration for future reference, such as "forward to Fred", "auto reply with info package", etc.

Delete
If this is an already configured email address, select this option to remove it from your domain.

POP3
When this option is selected, all mail to this address will be delivered to a POP mailbox with the same name as the address (e.g. mail to john@test1.com will be delivered to the POP mailbox "john"). Use this option if you wish to read your email by connecting to your BigBiz POP mailbox directly with a POP3 compatible email client such as Eudora, Pegasus, Netscape Messanger, Microsoft Outlook, etc. Do not use this option if you will pick up your email through your ISP's POP mail account (in this case, use the "Forward" delivery method). If you want to use the POP3 delivery option, then you must specify server, login, and password for your email client (refer to "How do I configure my email client to access my POP accounts" for more information).

ExpressWebMail
When this option is selected, all mail to this address will be delivered to an ExpressWebMail mailbox with the same name as the address (e.g. mail to john@test1.com will be delivered to the ExpressWebMail mailbox "john"). Choose this option if you plan to access your mail using a standard web browser. There are some advantages to using ExpressWebMail for your mail, including extra security (ExpressWebMail can be run over a secure session) and the ability to access your mail from anywhere in the world. The identity address and identity name fields are only used when you send email from this address. Please note that ExpressWebMail is only available on servers web01-05. The other servers do not have ExpressWebMail. For users on those servers without ExpressWebMail, we recommend the use of one of the free public mail programs, such as http://www.mail2web.com.

Alias
When this option is selected, all email to this address will be delivered to the specified alias address, using the delivery option configured for the alias address. For example, if john@test1.com is configured as an alias to webmaster@test1.com, then all email received for john will be handled in the same manner as email for webmaster. david to alias dave then mail to david@yourdomain.com will be treated like mail to dave@yourdomain.com. This is almost identical to configuring a forward to dave@yourdomain.com except an alias is handled in a more efficient manner.

Forward
When this option is selected, all email to this address will be forwarded to the specified address. The most common usage would be to forward mail from your domain to another mail account. For example, if the email address of the web designer for your domain is joe787@slip.net, you can set up the email address webmaster@test1.com to forward to joe787@slip.net. You can specify multiple email address in the forwarding list by separating each address with a space.

Autoreply
When this option is selected, all email to this address will automatically return the contents of a file to the sender. This option is useful if you want to set up a simple 'mailback' service. Optionally it will log all requests into a logfile you can download and import into a database or spreadsheet. For example, assume you keep an up-to-date list of items for sale in a file which users can retrieve by sending mail to inventory@test1.com. When email is sent to an autoreply address, the mail program will look for a file in your Mail directory with a .ar extension (for this example it will look for the file inventory.ar), whose contents are returned to the sender. The name of the file is the same as the address with a '.ar' extension. After configuring the autoreply delivery option, MailSetup will allow you to edit the contents of the autoreply file. To update the autoreply, either go back into MailSetup and reconfigure (this will let you edit the file) or you may upload the file into your Mail directory using ftp (make sure you set "text mode" when you upload). During configuration you will also need to enter the address and name of the administrator for the autoreply. The autoreply sent to the user will appear to come from this address. It is also the address where problems are sent. The administrator can handle users' replies (perhaps they had some questions which were not addressed in the autoreply), and other issues as related to the autoreply. Make sure you enter a valid email address so that you will receive replies. Use your real name or role name, as appropriate, for the name field.

Hypermail Archives
When this option is selected, all email to this address will be put into a hypermail archive on your web site. This feature is useful for creating mail archives that users can read with a web browser (e.g. the webmasters mailing list). The following configuration parameters are required:

Bounce
When this option is selected, all email to this address will automatically be returned to the sender. This option is useful to specify an invalid email address, perhaps for someone who is no longer associated with your domain.

Trash
When this option is selected, all email to this address will be discarded.

How do I setup email addresses for an aliased domain?

If you have an aliased domain (see How do I add additional domains to an existing BigBiz account?), you configure email addresses for that domain the same way as you would for the primary domain (see How do I configure my domain's email addresses?). For example, if the primary domain is cdstore.com and you have aliased musicstore.com to that domain and you want to setup the email address info@musicstore.com, you would setup instead the email address info@cdstore.com. All email sent to info@musicstore.com will be received by info@cdstore.com. Since musicstore.com is aliased to cdstore.com, they share the same email namespace.

How do I setup email addresses for a shared domain?

A shared domain shares the same email space as the primary domain. If your primary domain is mystore.com and you have a shared domain booksforsale.com, you will setup your email addresses for mystore.com and they will also work for booksforsale.com. For example, if you setup an email address fred@mystore.com and someone emails fred@booksforsale.com, it will follow the rules you set for fred@mystore.com. This means that you cannot share usernames across the domains.

How do I configure POP accounts?

BigBiz allows you to create POP mailboxes to receive your incoming email. This will allow you to access your email using any POP3 compatible mail client. For each email address you want associated with a POP mailbox, you must configure it to deliver to a POP mailbox. When this is done, go back to the entry screen for MailSetup and select the radio button next to Setup your POP accounts and passwords and then clicking Go. You will see the following screen:

- Enter a password for the master POP account. This account will let you have access to all the POP mailboxes for your domain using the one password (unless a password has been set individually for each mailbox).

- Enter each individual account user ID and password pair. Clock on Add New Userid after each POP user has been entered.

- Click on Goto MailSetup Home when you are done adding users.

 

Where can I obtain a POP-compatible email client?

There exist many email clients that you can use to connect to BigBiz's POP server. Your choice will be determined by what kind of computer you wil be using your specific needs. Here is a list of some of the more popular programs:

Mozilla Thunderbird (Windows, macOS, Linux)
Microsoft Outlook (Windows, macOS)

You can also use many online email clients (webmail) that can access external POP3 mailboxes, like Gmail and Outlook.com.

How do I configure my email client to access my POP accounts?

If you configure email delivery to a POP account, you can use your favorite POP3 compatible email client to read your mail. POP clients will require you to set the following fields:

My POP clients gets stuck when downloading messages. What can I do?

This is a fairly common problem with many POP clients, especially when the Internet connection is not fast and the POP mailbox is large. When the mailbox is too large, the client may time-out before the entire mailbox has been downloaded. If you are having difficulties downloading your messages, we suggest you use the POPview tool to examine your POP mailbox and perhaps delete the larger messages so you can download the remaining messages without timing out. The POPview toll is avaialble at: http://www.bigbiz.com/cgi-bin/popview.

Insteading of forwarding my email to a Gmail account, how do I configure Gmail to poll my POP account?

Forwarding your email to a Gmail account isn't a good idea because all your emails will be forwarded, including spam. If Gmail detects too many spam emails being forwarded, it will disallow forwarding to your Gmail account and you will lose your emails. The best solution for this problem is to have your email delivered to a local POP3 mailbox on the BigBiz server and have Gmail poll the mailbox to retrieve the emails. To configure your Gmail account to poll your BigBiz POP3 mailbox, first you must set up your email at BigBiz to deliver to a POP3 mailbox. Once that is done, configure Gmail to retrieve the emails from your POP3 mailbox.

Why can't I send email using the BigBiz SMTP (outgoing email) server?

Many ISPs are now implementing a policy called Port 25 Blocking which will effectively limit your options for sending outgoing email. If your ISP has put into action this policy, you must send your outgoing email via the ISP's SMTP server and not with the BigBiz SMTP server (mail.yourdomain.com). The Port 25 Blocking will block all attempts to access any other SMTP server other than the server that belongs to the ISP. Currently, the ISPs that have implemented this policy include MSN, Earthlink, and Verizon. Please refer to the BigBiz News page for updates.

When trying to send or receive email using Thunderbird 78 or higher, I get a security (TLS) error. How can I resolve this?

As of version 78 of Thunderbird, TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are disabled by default. In order to allow Thunderbird to connect, please follow these instructions from the Mozilla support page to enable TLS 1.0 and 1.1.