Email

1. I don't have a Plusnet Email address, how can I get one?

If you didn't choose an email address while signing up, you'll need to register one.

To register an email address, go to Email Settings (under My Account) and click Manage My Mail. Follow the instructions on screen and your email address will be ready for use in a few hours.

For more help on choosing and registering your address, find out How to register your Plusnet address.

2. What's my Plusnet Email address?

Once registered, your Plusnet email address will look like this: something@username.plus.com

It's made of three parts:

• something - You'll choose this when you first register your email address. It can be anything you like; most people use their first name
• username - Your Account Username - you chose it when you signed up for Plusnet
• plus.com - Make sure you get this part right, don't put plus.net

For example, if your name was Andrew and your Account username was smith, your email address could be: andrew@smith.plus.com

3. Can I have more than one email address?

Yes, go to Manage My Mail and follow the on-screen instructions to add as many addresses as you need.

Your extra address can have their own inbox and password, or you can use them to automatically forward email to another address of your choosing.

If you're not sure what's best for you, have a read through Email Addresses Explained.

4. How can I use Plusnet email?

You can either:

• Setup an email program on your computer (e.g. Outlook, Mac Mail or Thunderbird)
• Setup your mobile device (e.g. iPhone, Android or Blackberry) and use that to check and send mail
• Use our webmail service, which lets you send and receive email through our website

See our Email setup guides for step-by-step help with your email program.

Setting up Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail or Microsoft Outlook?

Why not have Plusnet Assist do it for you instead? It'll also help you fix problems with broadband, wireless and email - find out more.

Please note: Plusnet Assist is not currently available for Apple OS X or Linux systems.

5. What are my email username and password?

If you're setting up for the first time then you should use the following details:

• Email username: Your Account username
• Email password: Your Account password

If you're setting up an extra address that you've created in Manage My Mail, use the following details:

• Email username: Your mailbox username (in the format username+mailboxname)
• Email password: Your mailbox password

If you're not sure what these are, check the email we sent after the new address was created.

6. Can I use my Plusnet email address if I'm not connected at home?

Yes, the easiest way is to use Webmail. Then you can easily and securely check your email from any computer with an Internet connection.

If you're on the move with a laptop or mobile device, you'll be able to check your email as you do from home. If you have problems sending email while away from home, you'll need to set up your email program or mobile device to use SMTP authentication. Check our Email setup guides to find out how to do this.

7. What's the email storage limit?

There isn't one. Although if you have more than 1GB of email on our servers for more than 30 days, we may remove it without further notice. We do this to make sure our email network runs optimally all the time for all of our customers.

8. How can I deal with SPAM?

We use a system called IronPort to scan incoming mail and filter out Spam.

With the standard setup:

• The most obvious spam will be deleted before it hits your inbox
• Potential spam will be tagged and moved to a separate folder which you can check via Webmail

You can alter this behaviour or turn filtering off using Manage My Mail. Find out more about the available options in our Spam protection guide.

9. What's Tarpitting and how does it work?

Tarpitting helps keep our email system safe from spam abuse. If you use the email system to send bulk mailings (i.e. the same message to lots of people) you'll see short delays between sending emails. The more emails you send the more these delays will increase.

There won't be any delay to the first 4 emails that are sent. However, after the 5th email, a delay is introduced between each email sent and the person it's been sent to. This means that if you send a large number of emails to a large number of people, some of these emails may take a much longer time to be delivered.

Here are some examples of how tarpitting could delay your email:

• Send 1 email to 20 people - 4.5 second delay
• Send 1 email to 40 people - 23.6 second delay

Tarpitting only applies to emails sent within one connection to the mail server. If mail is sent as individual connections to the server then tarpitting doesn't apply.

10. I'm having problems with my Plusnet email

A lot of email problems can be fixed by following the instructions in our Email troubleshooting guide. It's also worth checking out our Service Status page to see if there are any problems we're already aware of and dealing with.

If you want to report a problem, you can call us or contact us online with the Help Assistant.

If you have to contact us, it'll be much easier for us to help if you can tell us:

• What the problem is
• The email program you're using
• The email address you're having problems with
• The settings you've used
• The error messages you're seeing (if any)

This page last updated 31^st January 2012