Setting Up Your Mail Account in Apple Mail for macOS
This guide will show you how to add your email address to Apple Mail on macOS.
You must update your macOS to verison 10.12 (Sierra) or newer before proceeding through this guide as earlier versions of the operating system do not have support for TLS1.2 a necessary security protocol to ensure the connection between your computer and our servers is successful and secure. We strongly recommend using the latest release of macOS at all times for optimal security. If your device does not support 10.12 or higher, you must instead use Thunderbird as your mail application.
Things you will need:
- Make sure that you’ve already created your mail account in Plesk. Here’s how! Come on back to this guide when you’re done creating your account.
- Confirm that you can login to webmail at https://webmail.websavers.ca with the email address and email password
- You will require your server hostname, email address, and email password. To obtain your server hostname, you can use the tool in the sidebar on this page (or bottom of the page if you’re on a smaller screen) to quickly look up the server hostname, or login to our Client Centre and click on your hosting plan to view your server name and hostname. The server hostname will be in parentheses beside the server name.
1. Open Apple Mail and Add an Account
To start following along launch Apple Mail – the envelope icon in your dock or Applications folder.
If this is the first account you will be adding to Apple Mail, then you will be presented with the new Account setup automatically.
If you already have one or more email accounts in the Mail app, choose Mail > Add Account.
2. Select Account Type
The first prompt will be to choose your account provider. Since this isn’t a branded account like Google or iCloud, you’ll need to choose “Other Mail Account.”
Press the Continue button.
You will then be prompted to enter your Name, email address and password. You can set whatever you like for your name, but be sure that the email address and password fields are both configured exactly as you set them up in Plesk.
Choose “Sign In”.
3. Provide your mail server details
In your next screen, you’ll be prompted for your mail server settings. Enter your email address and make sure you use your full email address in the “User Name” field. Both fields should be identical. Provide your password as configured in Plesk.
For the purposes of this guide, we’ll be setting up an Account Type of IMAP (which should be the default), however if you wish to use POP, you may choose that type as well. For more details on POP email configurations, see our email configuration reference document.
For both Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server, enter your server hostname (see above for info on how to find this). Click “Sign In” and finish the setup of your account.
The Mail app might prompt you to synchronize “Notes” with the server – please do not enable this.
4. Final Server Settings Configuration
You must complete these steps to prevent errors while using the mail account.
Choose the Mail menu in the menubar, then Preferences, then the Accounts tab. Select your Websavers hosted email account from the sidebar on the left. Choose the “Server Settings” tab.
Please ensure the following are set correctly:
- IMAP path prefix
- Click the “Advanced IMAP Settings” button
- Set the IMAP Path Prefix value to INBOX in all caps.
- Automatically manage connection settings: Uncheck it. You will likely see this under IMAP and SMTP sections — uncheck it for both.
- Incoming Settings
- Username and Password: must be your email address and email password
- Port: 143
- TLS/SSL: Enabled
- Authentication Type: MD5 Challenge-Response
- Outgoing Settings
- Username and Password: must be your email address and email password
- Port: 587
- TLS/SSL: Enabled
- Authentication Type: MD5 Challenge-Response
- Close the Preferences pane and save your settings if asked
- Quit Apple Mail and reload it.
That’s it! Mail should now be working.
Please send yourself an email – preferably from another email account – in order to test the receipt of new mail. Then reply to that email to ensure you can send email as well. For example, if you have a Gmail account, login to Gmail and send an email to your new address. Open Apple Mail, look for the new email from your Gmail account and reply to it. Verify in your Gmail account that you received the reply.
If you are able to send and receive within Apple Mail, then your setup is complete! If not, take a look through the settings for the account and make sure they match the settings described in our knowledgebase article here. If they do not, change them! If they do, but you are still not able to send or receive mail, create a support request detailing which action is failing. Please include a screenshot or copy of the error text provided by Apple Mail.
Posted in Email Apps
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