Professional Email Hosting for Your Domain

Rackspace Email is a business email hosting service that lets you create professional email addresses using your own domain, such as [email protected], instead of relying on a personal or generic email address.

With the Rackspace Email Add-on on Cloudways, each mailbox includes 25 GB of email storage and can be accessed through Rackspace Webmail or compatible email clients such as Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, and iOS Mail. You can also use secure IMAP and SMTP connections, create multiple aliases, configure email forwarding, and manage your mailboxes through the Cloudways platform.

Rackspace Email is intended for regular business communication where users need individual mailboxes for sending, receiving, storing, and organizing email.

Rackspace Email on Cloudways costs $1.50 per mailbox per month. Each mailbox includes 25 GB of storage along with webmail access, secure IMAP and SMTP support, email aliases, and forwarding.

Although the service has a fixed monthly rate of $1.50 per mailbox, billing is calculated on a daily basis according to the number of days in the current month. This means you pay only for the days that a mailbox remains active. For example, in a 30-day month, the rate is approximately $0.05 per mailbox per day.

The charge applies to each actual mailbox you create. Creating email aliases for an existing mailbox does not carry an additional charge, so you can have addresses such as [email protected] or [email protected] deliver messages to an existing mailbox without purchasing separate mailboxes for each alias.

If you want Cloudways to migrate an existing mailbox from another email provider to Rackspace, email migration is available separately at $10 per mailbox.

You can set up Rackspace Email directly from your Cloudways account. Go to Integrations > View All > Rackspace Email, activate the add-on, and add the mailbox you want to use, such as [email protected]. You can add additional mailboxes later as your team or business requirements grow.

If this is the first Rackspace mailbox being configured for the domain, you also need to update your domain's DNS records so that incoming email is directed to Rackspace. The standard setup includes two MX records pointing to mx1.emailsrvr.com and mx2.emailsrvr.com, an SPF TXT record authorizing Rackspace to send email for the domain, and an autodiscover CNAME record. Cloudways Support can also assist with configuring DKIM for the domain.

DNS changes can take 24–48 hours to propagate, so email routing may not update immediately after the records are added.

Once the mailbox and DNS records are configured, you can access your email through Rackspace Webmail or connect the mailbox to a compatible desktop or mobile email client using the Rackspace IMAP and SMTP settings. You can also manage features such as aliases and email forwarding through the Rackspace Email Add-on in Cloudways.

Yes. Rackspace Email can be connected to Microsoft Outlook using secure IMAP and SMTP settings, allowing you to send and receive mail from your Rackspace mailbox directly through Outlook.

For incoming email, configure the account as IMAP using secure.emailsrvr.com on port 993 with SSL/TLS. For outgoing email, configure SMTP using secure.emailsrvr.com on port 465 with SSL/TLS. Your complete Rackspace mailbox address and mailbox password are used as the login credentials, and SMTP authentication should be enabled using the same credentials.

IMAP is used to receive and synchronize emails between the Rackspace mail server and Outlook, so actions such as reading, moving, or deleting messages can remain synchronized across compatible devices. SMTP is used to send outgoing emails from your Rackspace mailbox through Outlook.

Rackspace Email can also be configured with clients such as Gmail, Thunderbird, and iOS Mail, so you are not limited to using Outlook or Rackspace Webmail.

For secure email-client access, use the following Rackspace Email settings:

• Account type: IMAP
• Incoming mail server: secure.emailsrvr.com
• IMAP port: 993
• IMAP security: SSL/TLS
• Outgoing mail server: secure.emailsrvr.com
• SMTP port: 465
• SMTP security: SSL/TLS
• Username/Login: Your complete Rackspace mailbox email address
• Password: Your Rackspace mailbox password
• SMTP authentication: Enabled, using the same credentials as the incoming server

IMAP is used to receive and synchronize messages between the Rackspace server and your email client, while SMTP handles outgoing email. Because IMAP keeps messages on the mail server, the same mailbox can stay synchronized when accessed from multiple compatible devices.

These settings can be used when manually configuring supported clients such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, or iOS Mail. After configuration, send a test message and confirm that both incoming and outgoing email are working correctly.

Rackspace Webmail is the browser-based interface for accessing your Rackspace Email mailbox. It allows you to use your business email without installing or configuring a separate desktop or mobile email application.

Through Webmail, you can send, receive, organize, and search your messages as well as manage contacts, appointments, meetings, and calendars. It also provides mailbox-management features such as email signatures, filters, forwarding, spam settings, safelists and blocklists.

Webmail is particularly useful when you need to access your mailbox from a browser or a device where your regular email client is not configured. You can still connect the same mailbox to applications such as Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, or iOS Mail through IMAP and SMTP if you prefer to manage email through an email client.

No. Rackspace Email is designed primarily for mailbox-based business communication, such as sending and receiving messages through addresses like [email protected], [email protected], or an individual employee's business email address.

It is not intended for mass-volume transactional email generated automatically by websites or applications. This includes messages such as ecommerce order confirmations, password resets, account notifications, form notifications, and other automated application emails.

For these types of messages, use a dedicated transactional email service instead. Cloudways provides options such as the Elastic Email Add-on or the Custom SMTP Add-on, which are designed for application-generated outgoing email.

You can therefore use Rackspace Email for your employees' or teams' regular inboxes while separately configuring a transactional email service for automated emails generated by your website or application.

No. Rackspace Email is a separate email hosting add-on and is not automatically included with a Cloudways hosting plan.

Cloudways hosting provides the infrastructure for hosting your website or application, while Rackspace Email provides the mailboxes required to send and receive regular business email using your domain. Having a website and domain on Cloudways therefore does not automatically create an email inbox for addresses such as [email protected].

You can activate Rackspace Email separately through Cloudways and add as many individual mailboxes as you require. Each mailbox costs $1.50 per month, billed daily based on the number of days the mailbox is active, and includes 25 GB of mailbox storage.

Once activated, mailboxes, aliases, and forwarding can be managed through Cloudways without requiring a separate Rackspace subscription.

Yes. If you are setting up Rackspace Email for your domain for the first time, you need to configure the appropriate DNS records so email servers know where to deliver messages sent to your domain and so Rackspace is authorized to send email on its behalf.

The standard Rackspace Email configuration includes:

• MX record: mx1.emailsrvr.com with priority 10
• MX record: mx2.emailsrvr.com with priority 20
• SPF TXT record: v=spf1 include:emailsrvr.com ~all
• Autodiscover CNAME: autodiscover.emailsrvr.com

The MX records route incoming email for your domain to the Rackspace mail servers. The SPF record authorizes Rackspace as an approved sender for your domain, while the autodiscover record helps compatible email clients identify the correct email service configuration.

Cloudways Support can also assist with DKIM configuration, which adds another layer of email authentication.

Yes. You can access the same Rackspace mailbox from multiple compatible computers, phones, tablets, and email clients. Rackspace Email uses IMAP for incoming email, which keeps messages stored on the mail server and synchronizes mailbox activity across connected clients.

For example, if you read, move, or organize a message in a compatible IMAP email client on one device, those changes can be reflected when you access the same mailbox from another connected device.

You can connect the mailbox to applications such as Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird, and iOS Mail using secure.emailsrvr.com. For incoming email, use IMAP port 993 with SSL/TLS. For outgoing email, use SMTP port 465 with SSL/TLS, with SMTP authentication enabled using your full Rackspace email address and mailbox password.