Cloudways gives you fast managed cloud servers, but it does not bundle mailboxes the way old-style shared hosting does. That catches a lot of people out, because there is no webmail link waiting in the dashboard the day you launch a server. Email on Cloudways is a separate service you switch on, and there are two different kinds depending on whether you want a personal inbox at your own domain or automated messages sent by your website. This guide covers both, step by step.
Why Cloudways Does Not Include Email by Default
Shared cPanel hosts run a mail server on the same box as your website, so you get mailboxes thrown in for free. Cloudways runs your site on a cloud server from DigitalOcean, Vultr, AWS or Google Cloud, and those servers are tuned for web traffic, not for storing and delivering mail. Sending mail straight from a cloud server is also unreliable, because the big providers block the standard mail port and messages from a fresh server IP address often land in spam. So Cloudways keeps email as a managed add-on instead, and you pick the add-on that matches what you actually need.
Which Email Option You Need
There are two jobs people call "email", and Cloudways solves them with different tools:
- Personal mailboxes at your domain, like you@yourdomain.com, that you read and reply to yourself. This is the Rackspace Email add-on.
- Automated messages your website sends, such as order confirmations, password resets and contact-form alerts. This is a transactional email add-on: Elastic Email or the free SMTP add-on.
Most guides only cover the first one. In practice you often need both: a Rackspace mailbox so customers can write to you, and a transactional service so your WordPress store can send receipts that actually reach the inbox. Steps 1 to 4 below set up mailboxes, and the section after that covers website sending.
Prerequisites
- An active Cloudways account with at least one server and application. If you are not set up yet, the Cloudways setup guide walks through it.
- A domain you control, with access to its DNS records at your registrar.
- About ten minutes, plus up to 48 hours for DNS changes to take effect.
Step 1: Add the Rackspace Email Add-on
Log in to the Cloudways Platform. In the new interface, hover over Integrations in the top menu, which is called Add-ons in the classic interface, and click Rackspace Email. You can also open View All to see every add-on in one window.
On the Rackspace Email page, go to Mailboxes and click Add Mailbox. Enter the address you want and a password with at least eight characters that mixes uppercase, lowercase and a number, then click Save Changes. Each mailbox costs $1.5 per month and comes with 25GB of storage, which is fixed and cannot be increased. To create several at once, keep clicking + Add Mailbox before you save.
Step 2: Point Your Domain's DNS at Rackspace
The first time you add a mailbox for a domain, you have to send that domain's mail to Rackspace by adding DNS records at your registrar. Add the following records:
- MX, host @ or left blank, value mx1.emailsrvr.com, priority 10
- MX, host @ or left blank, value mx2.emailsrvr.com, priority 20
- TXT (SPF), host @, value v=spf1 include:emailsrvr.com ~all
- CNAME, host autodiscover, value autodiscover.emailsrvr.com
Use a TTL of 3600 seconds or the lowest your registrar allows. For DKIM, which signs your mail and helps it pass spam checks, Cloudways will set the record up for you over live chat or a support ticket. If you manage this domain's DNS through Cloudways rather than your registrar, the DNS Made Easy add-on is where these records go. Changes can take 24 to 48 hours to spread across the internet, so do not worry if mail does not arrive the moment you save.
Step 3: Open Your Webmail
Once a mailbox exists you can read it in a browser without setting anything else up. In the Rackspace Email add-on, find the mailbox and click Launch Webmail, or go to the Rackspace webmail login and sign in with the full email address and the password you chose. Webmail is the quickest way to confirm the mailbox works, and you will need it in the next step to pick up a verification code.
Step 4: Connect Gmail, Outlook or Another Mail App
Webmail is fine for a quick check, but most people would rather read their mail in Gmail, Outlook, Thunderbird or the Mail app on their phone. Every client uses the same Rackspace server settings:
- Incoming (IMAP): secure.emailsrvr.com, port 993, SSL/TLS
- Outgoing (SMTP): secure.emailsrvr.com, port 465, SSL/TLS
- POP, if you prefer it to IMAP: secure.emailsrvr.com, port 995, SSL
- Login: your full email address and its password
Set the outgoing server to require authentication with the same login as the incoming server. To add the address to Gmail, open Settings, then See all settings, Accounts and Import and Add another email address, and enter secure.emailsrvr.com as the SMTP server on port 465 over SSL. Gmail sends a code to your Rackspace mailbox to prove you own it, so open webmail, copy the code back in, and the address is ready to send from.
How to Send Email From Your Website
A Rackspace mailbox handles your personal mail, but it is not built to fire off hundreds of automated messages. For the emails your site sends on its own, add a transactional service under the same Integrations menu:
- Elastic Email add-on is the one Cloudways recommends. It is built in, cheap, and set up in a couple of clicks.
- SMTP add-on is free and lets you plug in your own provider, such as SendGrid, Mailgun or Mandrill, by entering their SMTP details. You pay that provider directly.
- Gmail or Google Workspace works for low volumes, roughly 500 messages a day on a free Gmail account and about 2,000 on paid Workspace.
You can only run one transactional add-on per server. If you host several sites and want each to send through a different service, install a plugin like WP Mail SMTP on each WordPress site and set the provider there instead. Whichever route you choose, add the SPF and DKIM records that service gives you or your messages will land in spam. One more trap: cloud hosts block outgoing port 25, so send on port 587 or 2525.
Common Issues and Fixes
- Mail goes to spam. Almost always missing or wrong SPF and DKIM records. Add both for the service you send through, and check the "from" address matches the domain.
- No mail arriving yet. DNS can take up to 48 hours. Confirm the MX records point to mx1 and mx2.emailsrvr.com with priorities 10 and 20.
- Website emails not sending. You probably have a mailbox but no transactional add-on, or the app is still trying port 25. Switch it to 587 or 2525.
- Cannot log in to webmail. Use the full address as the username, not just the part before the @, and reset the mailbox password in the dashboard if you are unsure of it.
Email is the one piece Cloudways leaves to a specialist on purpose, and once the add-on and DNS are in place it runs quietly in the background. If you are still weighing Cloudways against other hosts, the Cloudways hosting guide and our Cloudways review cover the rest, and you can start a Cloudways trial to follow these steps on a live server. For the other day-to-day admin jobs, the Cloudways management guide points to the rest.
