cPanel and WHM have gone through some serious upgrades to their Email Hosting features throughout the versions. Just in the past 2 years, the cPanel team have made it easier than ever for web hosting providers, system administrators, and all other cPanel users to be able to host email accounts.
Let's go over a few of those features here.
cPanel & WHM Version 58
SubAddressing
SubAddressing (also called 'plus addressing') is the name for an e-mail that utilizes a '+' as part of the destination user. Subaddressing is a fantastic method to filter emails out of your inbox without having to set up filters for each sender. This feature is useful for both system administrators and for cPanel users.
For example, if I'm authorizing up for an account at a blossom shipment service to send my Dad a candy arrangement for Father's Day, I can make use of the e-mail address benny+flowerdeliveryservice@domain.tld to filter the unpreventable barrage of future "offer" emails into a folder called 'flowerdeliveryservice' at my email account benny@domain.tld. This has the additional (and rather unintended) feature of allowing you to track who is sharing your email address with other business as well since each address serves as a distinct address.
Side note: if you do not develop the folder prior to using this address, you do have to go to the server and manually subscribe to the new folder.
MDBox
MDBox is among those features that is most appealing to system administrators, and that many end users will never think about. The obvious advantages of converting from Maildir to MDBox are significant as well as worth a little analysis.
Maildir and MDBox are both storage space styles used by the mail application on cPanel & WHM web servers - Dovecot. There are plenty of differences, however, the one that pushed cPanel to include support is that email saved with Maildir makes use of a simple 1-to-1 style, while MDBox uses a many-to-1 layout. For the simple cPanel customer it makes no distinction whatsoever, but for the server administrator, it can mean a lot. Allowing greater than one mail message to be saved in a single file reduces inode usage, which speeds up anything that needs disk access. Features like backups or account transfers for any kind of cPanel with large e-mail accounts take a fraction of the time and also can be finished with minimal server effect.
If you're interested about the information of the execution, take a look at the release note from cPanel & WHM variation 58.
Response to a few of the Converting-to-MDBox Frequently Asked Questions:
- Mail operations do not go offline during the conversion.
- The length of time the conversion takes will depend upon the number of accounts as well as the quantity of e-mail, yet on a normal common web server, it's done in less than an hour.
- If you have a cron that anticipates Maildir layout, you'll need to change it to make use of doveadm for its inquiries.
cPanel & WHM Version 60
SNI Support in Dovecot
Elimination (or at least serious deduction) of domain-mismatch SSL mistakes were among things the cPanel team wanted to complete as part of the introduction of AutoSSL in 2014. This would help avoid end-user confusion, and reduce the support load for web hosts and system administrators. One of the ways they accomplished it is by adding SNI support for all services across cPanel, including Proxy Subdomains and also common service subdomains. Adding SNI assistance to Dovecot suggests that e-mails users can establish a safe and secure connection to their mail server utilizing their own domain name, without running into the mismatched SSL Domain error that has pestered individuals and support teams for several years.
cPanel & WHM Version 62
Email Account Settings
Among the greatest stress from end-users comes when they intend to examine their email beyond the webmail user interfaces on the server. As a web host provider, keeping your documents upgraded for those customers can be a massive source drainpipe. To begin, there are a ton of different gadgets (phones, tablet computers, laptop computers, etc) that you as well as your support team have to be familiar with. When you add in the number of native applications (like Mail on MacOS and also iOS) and third-party applications (Thunderbird, Outlook, Mailbird, Claws, Opera Mail, and so on) to that, the prospective mixes become excessive.
Enter the "Email Instructions" field
Utilizing that little box inside the webmail interface, an individual can send herself instructions for configuring any type of cPanel-hosted email account. The real exhilaration starts when you observe that the email consisting of directions also has a mobile configuration file connected to it. Open that mobile config file on your smartphone as well as 95% of the work is already done for you. All you have to do is validate the settings and enter your password. The account is established for you!
If you're a professional individual, then you can take this a step further: Add your WHM account login for your server to the cPanel app (for iOS and Android). You can log in to webmail for any type of user on your web server right from your mobile device, and send them the new account configuration guidelines with ease!
cPanel & WHM Version 64
IMAP Full-Text Search Indexing
IMAP Full-Text Search Indexing (powered by Solr) is another of those features whose advantage isn't instantly obvious, even to system administrators. The easiest way to explain this feature is that it gives unbelievably quick searching for all of your email hosted on a cPanel & WHM server over an IMAP link. As an e-mail user, you will promptly see that searching your e-mail is extremely fast, even if your e-mail is hosted on the server. For those who aren't big fans of folders, this is massive. It works for: any kind of IOS device, Microsoft Outlook®, SquirrelMail, Horde, Roundcube, and Mozilla Thunderbird.
If you didn't enable SOLR on the upgrade to version 64, you can allow it by means of the WHM's Manage Plugins user interface (Home >> cPanel >> Manage Plugins), or by running the install_dovecot_fts ( full-text search) script.
iOS Push Notifications
Obtaining email in a timely manner from your cPanel & WHM server on an iOS device can be frustrating. As an email user, you are compelled to select in between a delay, or being required to manually refresh your inbox. Although cPanel added support for Android devices in version 54, they didn't really add anything for iOS push notifications until version 64. There's a great deal of work that goes into establishing iOS push on a web server, because of how Apple requires things to be set up. However, the work is definitely worth the peace of mind.
For those interested, cPanel created a walk-through for how to get iOS Push Notifications set up.
If you still have questions about cPanel, make sure to visit our cPanel page or contact us by opening a support ticket or by using our live chat feature.
