The Control Panel gives you the option to configure your mailboxes to receive a warning message if they reach a certain percentage of their quota. This will help you avoid losing important e-mail messages when there is no space/inodes left in your mailboxes.

Generally, each mailbox has a disk space quota set, and maximum allowed messages (inode quota). The settings for each mailbox can be configured at your hosting Control Panel > Mail Manager section. Click on the link under the Quota column, next to the mailbox in question. There, besides the quota for the mailbox, you can define a custom level at which the system will send a notice. Note that besides this custom level, the system will always be sending a warning when 99% of the usage is reached.

You can also set a warning notice for the total space of the hosting account at the Resources section of the hosting Control Panel.

The disk/inodes usage of your mailbox can increase, and respectively you would receive a notification about its usage, in any of the following cases:

    1. You are using the Webmail to read and manage your e-mail. When using the Webmail program, all the messages you keep are stored on the server, consuming your mailboxes space.

    2. You download your e-mail messages to your local computer; however, you have configured your e-mail program to leave a copy of the downloaded messages on the server.

    3. You read your e-mail messages using some e-mail program which is configured to connect to the server using IMAP. In this case the messages are stored on the server the same way as when you are using the Webmail program.

    4. You have your mailbox set to forward to another e-mail address, but have the option Keep a copy of the forwarded messages enabled.

In any of the cases above, you have several options:

  • Clean up old messages from your mailbox using the Webmail program

    Log into the Webmail program to examine the messages you have in your mailbox, and delete the ones you do not need (old, spam, and virus messages that might be sitting in your mailbox, etc.). Do not forget to empty the Trash folder as any message you delete is usually moved there first.

  • Download some of the messages from the server to your local computer

    In case you wish to back up the messages from your mailbox to your local computer and then delete them from the server to free up some space, you need to configure an IMAP account in some e-mail program on your local computer. You can use any IMAP capable e-mail program (Thunderbird, MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Mail for Mac, Entourage, etc.). You can find instructions on how to configure an IMAP account in the most popular email software applications in the Configuring an e-mail program (Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail, etc.) section from our online documentation.

    Once you are connected to the server, you will be able to select the messages you wish to back up and move them to a local folder in your e-mail program. This way the messages will be downloaded from the IMAP folders on the server to the local folders on your computer. Once the messages are moved, they will no longer reside on the server, and you will have more space available in your mailbox.

Please note that the space taken by your mailboxes is counted towards the total disk space usage of your hosting account.