I want info@mysite.com forwarded to my Gmail. First check whether email for
this domain is set up correctly and tell me exactly which steps to take in
DirectAdmin. Do not change anything yet.
On shared web hosting this is the instruction that gets you furthest, and it helps to know why. The assistant works on your hosting account inside a walled off environment. It sees your files, your databases and your email, but it is not an administrator of the server. Creating a mailbox, setting a forwarder and changing a DNS record therefore happen in the DirectAdmin panel, not in the chat. What the assistant can do is check everything and tell you exactly which steps to take.
On your own Claude Server it works differently. There it acts as the DirectAdmin admin and can arrange mailboxes and DNS itself. See Jailshell or admin rights for the difference.
What the assistant does do
It looks at your domain from outside the server, the way a receiving mail server sees it. That is exactly the perspective you need for email problems:
- which MX records exist, so where your email goes,
- whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC are correct and work together,
- whether the sending IP address is on a blocklist,
- whether a DNS change is visible worldwide yet,
- whether your certificate is valid and when it expires.
That is covered in detail in Which checks the assistant can run itself. These checks never change anything, so you can safely run them while your email keeps flowing.
Creating a mailbox in DirectAdmin
In DirectAdmin, email lives under E-Mail Manager. Under E-Mail Accounts you create a new mailbox: you pick the part before the at sign, a password and a maximum size. That is the whole story, and yet three things go wrong afterwards.
First: a mailbox password is not your hosting account password. They are separate, and that is deliberate. Handing a mailbox to a colleague does not hand over your hosting.
Second: the settings for your mail program. Use your own domain name as the mail server, IMAP with SSL and the ports DirectAdmin shows for the account. Choose IMAP, not POP3, unless you know exactly why you want POP3. POP3 removes mail from the server, so your phone will show nothing.
Third: the space. A mailbox that is full refuses new mail quietly. The sender gets an error, you see nothing. Ask the assistant how much disk space your email uses; that is a read only question it is allowed to answer on your account.
Forwarders: forward, or keep a copy
Under Forwarders you send one address on to another. Two choices that matter a lot later:
Forward only. You create a forwarder without a mailbox. Nothing stays behind on the server. It saves space, but if the receiving party refuses the message, it is gone.
Forward and keep. You first create a real mailbox and add a forwarder to your other address. That way you always still have the original on your own domain. This is what we advise for addresses that really matter, such as info and billing.
A third option is a catch all: all mail to unknown addresses at your domain lands in one mailbox. It sounds convenient and in practice it mostly collects spam, because spammers guess addresses. Switch it on only with a good reason, then switch it off again.
Changing DNS without breaking your email
DNS sits in DirectAdmin under DNS Management for your domain. The mistake we see most often: someone moves a website to another server, changes the A record, and discovers a day later that email no longer arrives. That happens because MX records often point at the domain name itself. Change the A record and the email moves along with it.
The approach that prevents this:
- Ask the assistant for an overview of all current records first. Keep it.
- A day before the change, lower the TTL of the records you are going to touch. Your change will then be visible in minutes instead of a day.
- If you only want to move the website, point the MX records at a separate name that resolves to the old IP address, and change the A record after that.
- Once the change is in, have the assistant check that MX, SPF and DKIM are still correct and that the new records are visible worldwide.
It can do steps 1 and 4; you do steps 2 and 3 in the panel. That is exactly the split this article is about.
Common mistakes
"I asked the assistant to create a mailbox and it said it cannot." That is correct. On shared hosting it works inside your account and not as an administrator of the server. Ask for the steps and run them yourself, or move to your own server where it is allowed.
"I set the forwarder, but my mail still lands in the old mailbox." A forwarder forwards, it does not remove anything. If a mailbox with the same name still exists, it keeps filling up too. That is often what you want, but know that it happens.
"My forwarded mail ends up in spam at Gmail." Forwarding means your server re sends mail from someone else. SPF for the original sender no longer matches. For important addresses, a second mailbox that you read directly is more reliable than forwarding.
"I changed the A record and now my email is gone." See above. The email is not gone, it is being offered to the new server. Point the MX record back at a name that resolves to the old server, and have the assistant check when that becomes visible.
"The DNS change is an hour old and I see nothing." That is normal as long as the old TTL has not expired. Have the assistant check propagation; it can work out how long it may still lag.