Adding custom domain

Either you proceed as described in the knowledge base or if you only want to read/send e-mails from/via an external mailbox you do "Add a mailbox": https://kb.mailbox.org/en/private/e-mail/integrate-external-e-mail-accounts/. In the first case all e-mails are delivered directly to mailbox and in the letter case you have to enter the credentials of the IMAP4/SMTP server.

I followed the info to the best of my ability and was still informed by the system that it didn't work (clearly you're very adept at doing this kind of thing, so please consider how overwhelming and complex it is to a total newcomer to any of this kind of work).

Guess I'll need to talk to the helpdesk.

I doubt they will support you on this issue.
What system are you talking about? What error did you get? What have you done so far? But please don't post sensitive data here.

H Reay,

thank you for posting this question and thank you zapata for your assistance. I'm afraid I don't really understand what you are trying to do. Are you trying to set up an external mail-account in the mailbox web-client, using it only as an e-mail-client?

Or are you trying to change the domain "mailbox.org" to your custom domain?

Please let me know, so I can assist you further.

With kind regards

Felix Kaspar
mailbox Support

Zapata/Felix --

Thanks for any help you can offer.

All I'm trying to do is get my website to redirect its email to mailbox.org. Should be pretty straight-forward, by all accounts.

It feels like what I'm doing should be pretty easy, but the knowledge base documentation here goes to lengths to cover all possibilities for what to do on the webhost side -- 'your webhost may need this information, or this, or this' -- and then I'm having trouble with what to change here, which is again among a lot of technical info I'm trying to sort through.

I was able to get through what to do where on the webhost side (the info supplied here in, for instance, gridded table layouts wasn't what I saw on the webhost's end, so in trying to match up what to look for, and which information what webhost may need and be changed, it was a bit overwhelming), but the webhost helpdesk confirmed that it's finally all set up on their end.

The problem is that when I try to add a new email account here, it first tells me that it can't do so automatically over a secure connection (why? And is that a problem?), and then that it won't (or can't) do so automatically for some reason. So my only option is to do it manually.

I've tried to do it manually, copying and pasting the info mailbox.org supplies in the documentation, into all the needed fields in the process. But the error I got (to answer Zapata's question) is that it couldn't validate the info. It didn't say what info or where, so I'm unsure which of the (apparently correct?) info I pulled from the documentation and dropped into the fields (for the likes of the IMAP and POP3 details) was correct. Or if the issue is that it wasn't connecting with the webhost, despite my correct email and password being dropped into those requested fields.

The issue is that I'm over my head with a lot of this and trying to follow a narrow handful of instructions here that I've whittled down from a lot of instructions, and somewhere in those instructions I've seemingly done something wrong but I'm not told what, so I don't know what I've done wrong where, or if it's not me at all but the system not managing to accomplish something it should even with all the correct information in the correct place for it to do its needed processes (which is going to be unlikely, but tech isn't perfect, so it's a possibility).

I did reach out to the helpdesk here, and they sent a reply saying it's taking longer than usual to get back to me, but I think I may have gotten a newer email, so hopefully someone from the helpdesk can help walk me through this. I'd like to learn how to do it, but more than anything I just need it to work properly, so even if they end up needing to do it on their end, at least it'll be done, if not under ideal circumstances.

All of which is to say, hopefully they can walk me through what's going wrong, so hopefully I won't have to keep asking here. But I may be back. :)

Zapata/Felix - All right, there's been no reply from the helpdesk about this even still, which is a bit disappointing.

(Zapata, why did you think they wouldn't help with this? A user is having trouble setting up something with their service, which seems precisely the kind of thing a helpdesk does. But since they haven't answered yet, I'm now wondering if you're right and they simply won't, which is concerning for what I'd hoped would be a long-term place to work with, but if they aren't going to bother with this, I'm not sure about continuing to pay for a service with a helpdesk that doesn't help... that's the primary reason I'm leaving my current email service for another one.)

Ok, so this has totally changed with some recent verifications from my webhost. My situation now:

- I've added my custom domain (reay@reayjespersen.com) address here as an alias. Is that much correct so far?

- As it verified here when I did that, all of the MX records, etc., have been changed on the side of my webhost, per the instructions here to redirect custom domain emails. Which means that emails to reay@reayjespersen.com should be pointing here. Correct?

- The question I have at the moment is, when I'm in my reay@mailbox.org (primary) email inbox, if I click on Add an email, what info am I putting into the email address and password fields? Well... the email address I'm trying to add is reay@reayjespersen.com
But what's the password? Is that my mailbox.org password? That email address isn't being handled by my webhost any more, so I can't imagine it's looking for my webhost password. But since I'm of course already logged into my mailbox.org account, what would it need my mailbox.org password for? Or is that just a verification thing, to ensure that I'm actually a verified account holder trying to add this new email address into the primary mailbox.org's account?
I can't imagine it needs my mailbox.org primary account and password, because the button you click at the bottom right of the window says Add. I clearly don't need that primary account added.

It feels like I'm on the cusp of getting this all to finally work, but now this ambiguous issue has me stuck.

Your mx records look correct and if you have added an alias with your custom domain in the mailbox suite you should be able to send and receive e-mails. Have you tested this? What happens? Why do you want to add an e-mail (account?)? But you still have to create SPF, DKIM and DMARC records to avoid delivery problems.

"Add email account’ is used to view in mailbox’s web interface your emails that are handled by other providers.
If you want mailbox to manage the email for your domain, you simply need to create an external alias, add the verification TXT record to your domain’s DNS, and configure the MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records in your domain’s DNS.