Setting up an email account on a client application is a lot easier than it used to be. Most modern apps of this kind automatically detect your inbox’s IMAP/POP3/SMTP settings and configure your account in seconds. However, with so many clients and mail server configurations, every now and again, manual intervention is necessary.
People often try to configure their clients on their own and end up hitting confusing error messages. Often, these errors concern the SSL certificate used to encrypt the information between the email client and your mail server.
They could be caused by several different reasons, and we’ll now look at some of the most common ones.
Your email client isn’t configured correctly
There’s always the possibility that you (or your client) haven’t picked the correct IMAP/POP3/SMTP settings for your inbox. Double-check them to ensure you set the right ones and pay close attention to the networking ports your client will be using.
ScalaHosting customers can find the incoming and outgoing mail server settings in the Welcome Email they receive upon signing up. A copy of it is available in the My Details > Email History section of the Client Area.
Your domain isn’t correctly pointed
If your domain’s nameservers aren’t configured properly, you may have trouble accessing your email. In addition to this, the SSL certificate used for protecting your communication will not work correctly. Once again, ScalaHosting customers can find the correct DNS settings for their domain in their Welcome Email.
Bear in mind that after you modify a domain’s DNS settings, you need to give it some time for the changes to propagate throughout the world. The propagation period can take anything from a couple of hours to a day.
You don’t have an SSL certificate for your domain
You must ensure your client works with an SSL certificate. However, if your domain hasn’t got one, the application may run into a problem and display an error message. All ScalaHosting customers are entitled to a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.
If it hasn’t been activated for some reason, contact our technical support specialists, who will provide further guidance.
DO NOT use your email account without an SSL certificate
There are plenty of online guides telling you that if you encounter an SSL-related error, you should simply configure your client to communicate with the server through a regular, unencrypted connection. You definitely shouldn’t do this.
If you do, all the data passing between your email client and the mail server will be transmitted in plain text, and anyone will be able to intercept and alter it.
ScalaHosting customers who encounter any SSL-related issues can always get in touch with our technical support specialists, who will investigate the problem and provide a solution.
