HotDoodle Support

Many use the "POP3" email protocol which downloads emails into their PCs. Some use the IMAP protocol which leaves the emails on our servers. Other times a mailbox is unread and eventually fills up with spam.

What is there to fill up?

There are

Forwarding only email addresses. These never fill up, but no email is saved.
True mailboxes that store the mail. But any storeroom can overflow.

It comes down to a basic decision: Does HotDoodle keep a copy of the emails when we forward them? If so, then you have a full mailbox management responsibility.

There are three core email access protocols:

POP3 - the emails are downloaded to the PC and, typically, removed from the server
IMAP - the emails remain on the server, the email reader is merely displaying them
ForgetAboutIt - while not a formal protocol, the forget-about-the-mailbox strategy is commonly used, until the mailbox fills up.

Email Limits

There is an email limit on the account. Individual email accounts can also have limits.

When the account fills up, emails sent to ANY email address on this domain will bounce.

It is a good practice to use the domain's cpanel to set per-mail box limits on the big users. This way when they fill up the rest of the emails will continue to operate.

First, Dowload the Emails you Need

Before you delete agressively, copy the emails to your own storage. The most common way to do this is to set up a email client with "POP" access to the mailbox. The client then makes its own copy of the emails.

Mass Email Delete

Deleting emails by clicking each one is tedious and impractical.

The webmail Roundcube email application has an easier way.

You must

Delete all emails in trash - using the steps below

Note that you can do this even if they are over quota

Delete all the emails from inbox

Delete all the emails from trash (the emails from the inbox will be there)

Deleting Emails by Folder in Roundcube

Log in to Webmail.
Select Roundcube if not already your default webmail.
Select the folder you wish to remove all the emails from.
At the bottom of the panel under Select choose All.
At the top of the inbox, choose Delete.

Here are some of the possible strategies to prevent a mailbox from filling up.

Don't Abandon the Mailbox

Mailboxes fill up when there is nothing emptying them. Mailboxes that have users actively downloading and deleting tend to not have as many problems with filling up,

Have a email client downloading from the mailboxes

Most email clients using a "POP3" connection have an option to

"delete email from the server after N days".

So when there is a mailbox that no human actively maintains, you can

continued to forward to whatever personal emails are convenient for each person, but

somewhere configure ONE email client that connects to all the email accounts and

deletes the email from the server after 30 days

This way

The email server has a persistent copy for 30 days

Your email client has a persistent copy for all time

And mail boxes do not fill up.

Use the Enhanced Anti-Spam Email Store

We offer an enhanced anti-spam service, but a side benefit of the service is that the third party spam filter will store the emails on their server in case of nondelivery (such as if our server was down, or that mailbox was full).

Emails would still halt when we filled up but ..

as soon as there was room the missed emails would start arriving within 30 minutes.

So it would be an email delay, not a non-delivery.

(Full disclosure: Most sending email servers already will retry if the mailbox is full. But the sender may get notified and you look bad.)