A customer emails on Friday afternoon asking for a quote, and you only see it on Monday at the office. A missed opportunity. With your business email on your phone you reply within the hour, even from a building site or a café terrace. Setting it up takes five minutes, provided you have the right details to hand. In this article you’ll learn step by step how to get info@yourcompany.com onto your iPhone or Android phone, and which mistakes to avoid.

What you need before you start

Have these five things ready. They are in the welcome email from your hosting provider or in your hosting control panel; clients of EM Hosting & Design will find them in their welcome email, or can simply ask us.

  • Your full email address, for example info@yourcompany.com. With almost every host, this is also your username.
  • The password of the mailbox. Not the password of your website or your hosting panel.
  • The name of the mail server for incoming and outgoing mail. Often this is mail.yourcompany.com or a server name from your host.
  • The ports: for IMAP usually 993 (SSL), for outgoing mail (SMTP) 465 (SSL) or 587 (STARTTLS).
  • The account type: always choose IMAP, never POP. More on that in a moment.

IMAP or POP: why the difference matters

With IMAP your mail stays on the server and your phone synchronises with it. Read a message on your phone and it shows as read on your laptop too. Delete something and it’s gone everywhere. With POP your phone downloads the mail and (often) removes it from the server. Suddenly messages are missing on your laptop, or the other way round. So choose IMAP. The only downside: your mailbox on the server fills up if you never tidy it. For that you need a mail package with enough storage.

Setting up on an iPhone (Apple’s Mail app)

  1. Go to Settings → Apps → Mail → Mail Accounts → Add Account. (On older iOS versions: Settings → Mail → Accounts.)
  2. Choose Other at the bottom, then Add Mail Account. Don’t pick Google or Outlook: those are for Gmail and Microsoft accounts.
  3. Enter your name (as recipients will see it), your email address, the password and a description. Tap Next.
  4. Make sure IMAP is selected at the top. Under Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server, enter your host’s server name, with your full email address as the username and the password. Fill in the username and password for the outgoing server too, even though it says “optional”.
  5. Tap Next and then Save. The iPhone verifies the settings; this can take a minute.

Do you get a message that the server is not secure or that the certificate is wrong? Don’t press Continue; check the server name instead. Usually there’s a typo, or you’re using mail.yourcompany.com while your host uses its own server name.

Setting up on Android (Gmail app)

  1. Open the Gmail app, tap your profile picture at the top right and choose Add another account.
  2. Choose Other (not Google, Outlook or Yahoo).
  3. Type your email address and tap Set up manually. Choose Personal (IMAP).
  4. Enter the password. For the incoming server settings, enter your host’s server name and port 993 with security SSL/TLS.
  5. For the outgoing server: the same server name, Require sign-in on, port 465 (SSL/TLS) or 587 (STARTTLS).
  6. Choose how often the app should sync and give the account a name. Done.

Prefer the Outlook app (works on iPhone and Android)? Go to Settings → Add account → Add email account, type your address, choose IMAP and enter the same details. Outlook first tries to find everything automatically; if that fails, tap “Advanced settings”.

Test it straight away

Send an email from your phone to your private address and reply to it from your private address. If both arrive, incoming and outgoing mail both work. Also check whether a message you read on your phone shows as read on your laptop. If so, IMAP is set up correctly.

The 5 mistakes we see most often

1. POP chosen instead of IMAP. Messages “disappear” from the laptop or the phone. Remove the account and add it again as IMAP.

2. Hosting panel password used. The mailbox has its own password. Forgotten it? Your host can reset it; for our clients we do that within one working day.

3. Outgoing mail without sign-in. Receiving works, sending doesn’t (“cannot send”). Turn on sign-in for the outgoing server with your full email address and password.

4. Wrong port or security. 993 goes with SSL/TLS, 143 with STARTTLS; for sending, 465 with SSL/TLS and 587 with STARTTLS. Mix them up and you get a connection error.

5. No signature and no spam filter. Put the same signature on your phone as on your laptop (name, company, phone number, website) and remove the default “Sent from my iPhone”. Getting a lot of spam? Turn on the spam filter on the server, not just in the app.

Even better: business email via Microsoft 365

An IMAP mailbox with your host is fine for most business owners. Do you work with several people, want a shared calendar and contacts that are the same everywhere, or need large attachments and more storage? Then Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online) is the better choice: your phone, laptop and tablet stay fully in sync, including calendar and contacts, and the mailbox is much larger. We supply and set up Microsoft 365 for our clients, including migrating your existing mail.

Secure your mail on your phone

Your business mail is now on a device you carry everywhere. So set a passcode or face recognition on your phone, keep the operating system up to date and use a unique password for your mailbox that you use nowhere else. If you receive an email saying your mailbox is full or your domain name is about to expire, don’t just click: first read how to spot a fake email about your domain name or hosting.

Not working, or would you rather we take care of it?

Leave your website address below. We’ll check your website and your email settings (such as SPF, DKIM and DMARC, which determine whether your mail stays out of the spam folder) and you’ll receive a personal report by email. Free and without obligation. Clients of EM Hosting & Design: we’ll of course just help you set it up.

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Prefer to call? +31 (0)166 700204, Mon–Fri 9:00–17:30 (CET).