You can add your business email account to Apple Mail on a Mac in a few minutes, either by letting Apple Mail detect the settings automatically or by entering your mail server details manually. This guide covers both, plus the settings you'll need and a few fixes for common problems.
Before You Start
Have the following ready:
- Your full email address (e.g. you@yourdomain.com)
- Your email account password
- Your domain name, since the mail server is usually mail.yourdomain.com
These settings are the same whether your hosting account runs on cPanel or DirectAdmin: the mail server itself doesn't change based on which control panel you use to manage it.
Step-by-Step: Adding Your Account in Apple Mail
- Open the Mail app on your Mac.
- Go to the Mail menu and choose Add Account (on older macOS versions this is under Mail > Preferences > Accounts, then the + button).
- Select Other Mail Account from the list, then click Continue.
- Enter your name, your full email address, and your password, then click Sign In.
- Apple Mail will try to find your settings automatically. If it fails, it will ask you to enter them manually, which is expected for most business email accounts, not a sign something is wrong.
Manual Server Settings
If Apple Mail asks for manual settings, enter the following, replacing yourdomain.com with your actual domain:
- Username: your full email address
- Incoming Mail Server: mail.yourdomain.com
- IMAP port: 993 (with SSL) or POP3 port: 995 (with SSL)
- Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): mail.yourdomain.com
- SMTP port: 465 (with SSL) or 587 (with STARTTLS)
- SMTP authentication: on, using the same username and password as the incoming server
Always choose the SSL-secured ports (993 for IMAP, 995 for POP3, 465 for SMTP) rather than the unencrypted ones. This keeps your login and messages encrypted between your Mac and the mail server.
Choosing Between IMAP and POP3
IMAP keeps your messages synced on the server, so they show up the same way across your Mac, phone, and webmail. POP3 downloads messages to one device and can remove them from the server. For most business owners who check email from more than one device, IMAP is the better choice. See IMAP vs POP3: Which Should You Use? for a fuller comparison.
Troubleshooting
- "Unable to verify account name or password": double-check the password and make sure you're using your full email address as the username, not just the part before the @.
- Connection or certificate warning: confirm the server name is exactly mail.yourdomain.com and that you're using the SSL ports listed above.
- Mail sends but doesn't receive, or vice versa: check that both the incoming and outgoing server fields are filled in correctly. It's easy to set one and leave the other blank or pointed at the wrong server.
- Nothing works after several tries: remove the account from Mail > Settings > Accounts and add it again from scratch, choosing manual setup from the start instead of letting Apple Mail auto-detect.