How to Set up and Configure Rackspace Email on a Cloudways Server

Many small businesses have trouble managing their email accounts. They often use free services that don’t look professional and don’t have the features they need. This can make it hard for them to build trust with their clients and appear credible.

You can easily improve your email experience by setting up professional email accounts through Rackspace for just $1/mo per mailbox on Cloudways. When you connect Rackspace email to your Cloudways server, you can create custom email addresses that match your brand.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to set up Rackspace email on your Cloudways server. We’ll also cover the manual approach to configuring Rackspace email to show you how quick and easy Cloudways makes this process.

We’ll cover everything you need to know, from changing your DNS settings to making email accounts and sending them to your main email address.

Let’s get started.

Overview of Rackspace Email

– Source: Rackspace

Rackspace Email is an email hosting service for businesses that require professional email addresses, such as [email protected]. It offers a webmail interface, allowing users to check and manage their emails directly from a web browser.

With Rackspace’s webmail, you can perform all essential email tasks, such as sending and receiving messages, managing signatures, and setting up email forwarding.

It also lets users choose how they want to handle emails, whether through webmail or forwarding them to other popular email services like Gmail.

Benefits of Using Business Email

Having a business email is essential for many reasons. It helps separate your work communications from your personal ones, ensures your emails look professional, and provides better control over your communication.

Here’s why using a professional email address is crucial for businesses:

🤝 Enhances Credibility and Trust: Sending emails from a business email address rather than a personal one can make a stronger impression on potential customers and partners, as it shows professionalism and legitimacy.

🎨 Strengthens Brand Identity: Sending emails from your business domain helps reinforce your brand. Using a personal email for business can create confusion and might seem unprofessional, affecting how your business is perceived.

🛠️ Streamlines Email Management: With a business email, you can easily manage user accounts, including creating new ones for new employees, removing old ones, and setting up email forwarding, ensuring smooth communication management within the organization.

Get Business Email with Rackspace on Cloudways

Experience premium email hosting with Rackspace on Cloudways. Benefit from guaranteed uptime, top-notch privacy, and hassle-free setup for just $1.00/mailbox/month.

Learn More!

How to Set up and Configure Rackspace Email Account

We’ll first look at how to set up emails using Rackspace within Cloudways, and then we’ll take a look at the manual method.

Method #1: Set up and Configure Rackspace Email on Cloudways

To set up a Rackspace mailbox on Cloudways, you can achieve this quickly and simply. Once you access your Cloudways account, you can go to the Add-ons section.

This setup is the same for Cloudways Flexible and Cloudways Autonomous. So, if you are using Cloudways Autonomous, follow the instructions below.

Once you select the Rackspace add-on, you must create a new mailbox based on your domain, such as [email protected]. Your one mailbox will cost you $1/month.

The pricing instructions will be reflected on the mailbox creation prompt. Once you add the desired mailbox email address and password, you can proceed with Save Changes.

Once your mailbox is created, your mailbox details will reflect as shown below. You can easily update your mailbox password from the UI itself.

You can access the mailbox login URL with your created mailbox credentials by clicking on the Launch Webmail option. That’s it!

Your mailbox is ready to use. We just need to add the Rackspace DNS records in our DNS manager.

Here’s how your Rackspace webmail will be launched. You can log in and start using your email.

Configure Rackspace DNS Records on DNS Manager

Once we finish the mailbox setup on Cloudways, we must add the following Rackspace DNS, including MX, TXT, and CNAME records, to your DNS manager. In our guide, we have the DNS setup on Namecheap.

Settings of Rackspace DNS Records

Type	Hostname	Destination	Priority	TTL
MX	@ or left blank	mx1.emailsrvr.com	10	3600 seconds, or the lowest allowed
MX	@ or left blank	mx2.emailsrvr.com	20	3600 seconds, or the lowest allowed
TXT	@ or left blank	v=spf1 include:emailsrvr.com ~all	N/A	3600 seconds, or the lowest allowed
CNAME	auto-discover	autodiscover.emailsrvr.com	N/A	3600 seconds, or the lowest allowed

You can check the pattern of how the Rackspace DNS records are added against the DNS manager.

1. MX Records

2. TXT Record

3. CNAME Record

That’s it! Your Rackspace mailbox is all set now. You can start your emails with Rackspace on the Cloudways Platform.

Rackspace Mailbox as a Forwarder With Gmail

Sometimes, you might want to set an email forwarder against your email address. Email forwarding is a handy function that allows you to forward receiving emails from one address to another. This can be beneficial for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it makes communication easier by letting you receive emails in your inbox from several different addresses. This is especially useful if you have moved to a new email address and want to ensure you don’t lose any messages sent to your previous one.

To set up the Rackspace email address with Gmail, you can go to Gmail settings, then click on Accounts to add another email address in the setup.

It will prompt you to a new screen where you will add the Rackspace email address and set it up as an alias.

Once you proceed with Next, you will see a screen to set up Rackspace email address details along with the SMTP Server. To configure your email client, you can get the required IMAP settings from the Rackspace guide.

Default IMAP Settings

• Your Name: Your Name or Business Name
• ​Login Name: Your Rackspace Mailbox Email Address
• ​Password: Your Rackspace Mailbox Password
• ​Account Type: IMAP
• ​Incoming Mail Server: secure.emailsrvr.com
• ​Outgoing Mail Server: secure.emailsrvr.com
• ​Incoming Mail Server (IMAP) TCP Port: 993 (SSL)
• ​Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) TCP Port: 465 (SSL)

Once the setup is complete, you will get a confirmation code in your Rackspace mailbox. You must add it here to complete the setup, and you are good to go. Once you receive or send emails from your Gmail ID, they will automatically be forwarded to your Rackspace mailbox.

Gmail as a Forwarder with Rackspace Mailbox

If you want to forward Rackspace email to Gmail, you can easily do so from your Cloudways Platform in a few minutes. You must go to the Forwarding Mail tab under Rackspace add-on, where you can set the forwarder with Cloudways provided Rackspace Add-on.

Once you select the mailbox you set on Rackspace from the dropdown, you will add the Gmail email address below. Then, select the option to save copies of forwarded emails and save the changes to make them effective.

That’s it! Your Gmail ID is set as a forwarder with Rackspace mailbox on Cloudways.

Method #2: Set up and Configure Rackspace Email Manually

If you want to add a mailbox with Rackspace directly from the Rackspace Control Panel instead of with Cloudways as an add-on, follow the steps shared below. The setup is a bit lengthy.

You may add a single mailbox to your Rackspace email account by going to the Cloud Office Control Panel’s Mailboxes section and selecting the Add Mailbox option.

An alternative is to use a CSV or Microsoft Excel file if you need to add several mailboxes simultaneously. You must create the file with the required data, including mailbox names and passwords, and upload it to the Control Panel. This strategy is really helpful when creating mailboxes for many users.

To add a mailbox to your Rackspace Email account, follow these steps:

• Log in to the Cloud Office Control Panel on your Rackspace Cloud Office admin ID and password.
• Navigate to the Rackspace Email section and click on Mailboxes.

• If you have multiple domains, select the domain to which you want to add the mailbox.
• Click on the Add Mailbox button.

Note: If the Add Mailbox button is unavailable, you need to add the necessary licenses to your account before creating a mailbox. See the instructions for [adding a mailbox license].

Fill out the required information in the provided fields:

• First Name and Last Name (optional): mailbox owner’s first and last name
• Display Name (optional): name to display when the user sends email
• User Name: name to use in the email address (e.g., [email protected])

💡 Note: You cannot use a username that already exists as an alias, group list, distribution list, or another mailbox. Remove any conflicting addresses before using the same username for a different purpose.

• Password: a password with at least eight characters, including characters from at least three of the following four types: uppercase letters (A-Z), lowercase letters (a-z), numerals (0-9), and non-alphanumeric symbols (e.g., !, #, $, %).
• Confirm: retype the password and click Save to complete the process.

💡 Note: Mailbox creation in the Cloud Office Control Panel can take up to 15 minutes. After the mailbox is available, you can log in at apps.rackspace.com.

The mailbox will appear in the mailboxes list. To manage options like forwarding, autoreply, aliases, or settings, click on the mailbox name and then select the corresponding tab on the Details page.

After completing these steps, remember to set up Rackspace DNS records in your DNS manager. You can find detailed instructions on how to do this earlier in the guide. Those instructions are also provided in the previous section if you want to set up email forwarding.

Migrate Existing Emails to Rackspace

To migrate your email using the Rackspace Self-Service Migration Tool, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Cloud Office Control Panel on your Rackspace Cloud Office admin ID and password. If you are a Cloudways user, you will need to select the source & destination mailbox details to migrate your emails.

2. Navigate to the Rackspace Email section and click on Mailboxes.

3. Click on the mailbox you want to migrate.

4. On the mailbox details page, click on the Migration tab.

5. Click on the Start Migration button.

6. Select the type of migration you want to perform:

• IMAP Migration: Migrate emails, contacts, and calendar events from another IMAP email provider
• POP Migration: Migrate emails from another POP email provider
• PST Migration: Migrate emails from a Microsoft Outlook .PST file

7. Enter the required information for the selected migration type, such as the source email address, password, and server details. Then click the Next button to continue.

8. Next, you will add the Source and Destination mailbox details.

9. Review the migration details and click Start Migration to begin the process.

10. The migration will run in the background. You can monitor the progress on the Migration tab.

11. Once complete, your emails will be migrated to the destination mailbox, and you will see the following screen.

The Self-Service Migration Tool makes it easy to migrate your email data from various sources, including IMAP, POP, and Outlook .PST files, directly into your Rackspace Email account.

Troubleshoot Common Issues

1. Error: Unable to Verify Domain Ownership

If you’re trying to add your email domain to Gmail (Google Workspace or Gmailify) and cannot verify domain ownership, it might be due to incorrect DNS settings or other conflicting records.

Solution

• Check DNS Settings: Ensure you have added the correct TXT record value provided by Google Workspace or Gmailify in your domain’s DNS settings.
• Wait for DNS Propagation: After making changes, you may need to wait up to 48 hours for DNS propagation. Cloudways DNS Made Easy minimizes the wait time to just a few hours.
• Avoid Conflicting Records: Ensure no conflicting TXT records or DNS errors are present. If issues persist, try alternative verification methods like adding a CNAME record, an HTML file, or a meta tag to your domain.
• Troubleshooting Tools: Use DNS verification tools like Google’s DNS checker or your domain registrar’s support to confirm the TXT record is correctly set.

2. Error: Incorrect MX Record Configuration

If your email domain is not receiving emails after adding it to Gmail, it could be due to incorrect Mail Exchange (MX) record settings.

Solution

• Verify MX Records: Ensure the MX records in your domain’s DNS settings match those provided by Google Workspace or Gmailify.
• Remove Conflicting MX Records: Delete any existing MX records pointing to another email service.
• Wait for DNS Changes: DNS changes can propagate up to 48 hours, so allow time before testing.
• Send Test Emails: Send a test email to ensure the MX records function correctly. If bounce messages or delivery issues arise, revisit the DNS settings for possible errors.

3. Error: Domain on Client Hold Status

Email functionality may be disrupted if your domain is on client hold status, preventing you from receiving or sending emails.

Solution

• Update Domain Information: Check and update your domain’s contact information. Follow the instructions in the verification email sent by your domain registrar to remove the client hold status.
• Verify Domain Status: Use a domain status checker tool to confirm if the domain is active after changes.

4. Error: Exceeded Mailbox Storage Limit

If you’re not receiving emails, your mailbox might be full, causing any incoming emails to bounce back to the sender.

Solution

• Check Mailbox Quota: Review your mailbox storage usage.
• Free Up Space: Delete unnecessary emails or upgrade your storage plan to avoid exceeding the limit again.

5. Error: Incorrect Email Client Settings

Issues with sending or receiving emails on a mail client or mobile device might stem from incorrect server settings.

Solution

• Verify Incoming and Outgoing Server Settings: Ensure your email client or mobile device is configured with the correct IMAP/POP3 and SMTP server settings provided by your email hosting provider.
• Update Credentials: Double-check that your username, password, and server port numbers are accurate.

6. Error: Email Sent to Spam or Trash

If your emails consistently go to spam or trash folders, it might be due to aggressive spam filter settings.

Solution

• Adjust Spam Filters: Review and adjust your spam filter settings and blacklist configurations to ensure legitimate emails are not misclassified.
• Whitelist Important Senders: Add important contacts to a whitelist or safe senders list.

Summary

Using a custom email domain adds professionalism to your website and allows you to create specific addresses for different departments, like marketing or support.

With Cloudways, setting up a custom email domain is easy. Once you have an account, use the Rackspace add-on to create a mailbox for your domain.

You can also set up aliases, enable mail forwarding, and connect your Rackspace inbox to your preferred mail client, as we did with our Gmail account in this guide.

If you only want to send bulk emails without receiving them, the Cloudways SMTP add-on offers a more budget-friendly option.

If you encounter any issues during setup, check the troubleshooting section or leave a comment below, and I’d be more than happy to help.