How to view, change, and manage your mailbox storage usage and quota in Plesk

You can delete messages using your mail app or webmail. Generally speaking finding and removing the largest messages will have the greatest effect. For example removing a dozen 5MB messages will be significantly more useful at reducing server storage usage than removing hundreds of 5KB messages. The largest messages will likely have videos, photos, PDFs, or other documents attached.

Begin by logging in to webmail

Fnd the mail folders taking up the most space

1. In webmail, select your email address in the upper right corner
2. Choose “Settings”
3. On the left select “Folders”.
4. Here it shows the sizes of each of your mail folders in MiB or GiB (similar to Megabytes or Gigabytes).
5. Take note of the largest folders in the list.
6. Click Back in the upper left corner to exit out of Settings and get back to the inbox.

How to search for, and remove, the largest messages in that folder

1. Head back to your inbox / webmail home.
2. Select one of the largest folders you found in the list of folders on the left.
3. In the search box at the top of the message listing, search by size by entering this: size=3M to see all messages greater than 3MB. You can continue to adjust that size down if you don’t get many results. Examples: 1MB, or 750KB are accepted. Tip: If a message in the list has a little box with a number and arrow in it (like: “3 >”) this means there are multiple messages in that discussion and at least one of those messages is greater than the size you searched for – click the number/box to see the messages in the discussion.
4. Select the checkbox beside the ones you’re comfortable removing, then choose the button at the top of the list with the three horizontal bars, then “Delete permanently.” Using this option ensures they’re immediately removed from server storage rather than just moved to the Trash folder. Tip: If you need to keep the attachment in the message, you can always download the attachment to your computer before removing the email message.
5. Repeat this for each page of results, and then also each of the largest folders you found

Tip: If you chose the trash button instead of the one called “Delete Permanently” then, once you’re done removing, you must click on the Trash folder, then the “Clear Folder” option to permanently remove those messages.

Tip: Don’t forget about your Sent folder!

You can alternatively search for older messages, which may be less effective in clearing up space, as older messages aren’t necessarily the largest ones. In the search box, enter before=YYYY-MM-DD replacing YYYY-MM-DD with the year month and day of the most recent messages you wish to see. For example before=2020-07-06 will show all messages received before July 6 2020.

If your searches indicate to you that you can’t delete that many messages, then you will need to use the steps below to either 1) Move messages to your computer, or 2) Upgrade to our Exchange mail hosting solution that has much larger quotas available.

Alternative methods for deleting messages

Important Note: these are not reversible

• Erase All Messages via Plesk: In Plesk, under Mail, you can select the checkbox beside any given email account and choose the button “Empty Mailbox” to erase everything in it. This will, within minutes, get your mailbox operational again at the expense of all emails in it. Note: if you use a mail app on your computer, those messages will be erased as well as it syncs with the server.
• Erase a Date Range Server-Side: Since it can be cumbersome to directly erase larger quantities of messages between two date ranges with webmail, since you have to do 10 at a time, you can open a ticket and provide us with the email account, one or two mail folders, and a date range like this: 2021-01-01 : 2023-12-31. And indicate that you’d like the emails with those parameters erased and we’ll make it happen server-side. Please note: we cannot be selective with this – it’s everything in a range or you do it manually via webmail.
• Multi-Select or Search in your Mail App: The above description is for webmail. This is because the delete option in most mail apps will move messages to the trash, but moving messages won’t work when your mailbox is full. Here’s a few ways around that by app:
  • Apple Mail: select the messages you wish to delete, then hold down the keys option + command and then press the delete key. This should permanently delete the selected messages without sending them to Trash.
  • Thunderbird or Classic Outlook: select the messages you wish to delete, then hold down the shift key then press the delete button. This should permanently delete the selected messages without sending them to Trash.

Moving older messages from the server to your computer (also called local archving) frees up storage on the server. You can still reference the emails whenever you like, but only on the one device that you’ve archived messages to. This guide will show you how to archive messages to your computer to free up space on the server. You could opt to move messages in specific mail folders, or by date.

Tip: Don’t forget about your Sent folder!

If you’re currently utilizing our Helium or Carbon hosting plans, upgrading will allow you a larger per-mailbox limit (limits for each plan described above).

Here’s how to upgrade your hosting plan

If you’re currently using the Titanium hosting plan, your options are:

1. Reduce your mail account’s disk usage using one of the above options (delete, offline archive)
2. Migrate your hosting plan to a VPS
3. Migrate your email accounts to our Exchange mail hosting – see the option below for details.

You may review all mail hosting options for comparison here.

Our Microsoft Exchange Hosting is fully Canadian-soil business-class mail solution. Business class means you get a combination of features like:

• 50GB of storage per mailbox, with a 300GB per mailbox upgrade option
• Synced calendars, contacts, and tasks
• Shared Accounts
• Group Accounts

We’ll also take care of the migration for you if your email is currently hosted on our shared hosting and you opt for an annual payment cycle.

More details on our Canadian Microsoft Exchange Hosting here.

Generally speaking, migrating just your email to Exchange (the option above) can be a quick and simple solution. It offers more mail features, like synced calendars and contacts, push notifications, and more! The downside is, Exchange incurs a cost per mailbox.

If you have numerous mail accounts, and you need to keep all of them, or if you also want improved performance for your websites, another option is to migrate your entire account (websites, email, DNS hosting, all in one) to a virtual private server (VPS).

This means you have an entire server to yourself wherein you can specify whatever mail quotas you wish. The disk space is scalable up to 450GB total and can be changed at any time with zero downtime.

Learn more about our managed VPS options.