If your mailbox is full, you may stop receiving new emails until space has been freed up or the mailbox storage limit has been increased.
This usually happens when the mailbox has reached the storage limit set in cPanel, or when the overall hosting package is running low on available disk space.
How to free up mailbox space
To free up space, you can remove emails that are no longer needed. Large emails with attachments often use the most storage, so these are a good place to start.
You may wish to check and clear the following folders:
- Inbox
- Sent Items
- Deleted Items or Trash
- Junk or Spam
- Archive folders
- Any custom folders containing large attachments
After deleting emails, make sure you also empty the Deleted Items or Trash folder. In many cases, emails will continue to use storage until they have been permanently removed.
Archiving emails locally
If you need to keep older emails but do not need them stored on the server, you may be able to archive them locally on your computer using an email client such as Outlook.
This moves or stores older messages on your machine rather than keeping them in the mailbox on the server. This can help reduce mailbox usage while still allowing you to keep a copy of important messages.
Before removing large amounts of email, we recommend making sure you have a suitable backup or archive in place.
Increasing the mailbox size
Depending on the available disk space on your cPanel hosting package, you may be able to increase the mailbox size from within cPanel.
To check or update the mailbox quota:
- Log in to cPanel.
- Go to the Email section.
- Select Email Accounts.
- Find the mailbox you want to update.
- Click Manage.
- Review the current storage limit.
- Increase the mailbox size if there is enough available space on the hosting package.
- Save the changes.
If the hosting package itself is also low on disk space, you may need to remove unwanted files, clear other mailboxes, or discuss increasing your hosting package allowance.
Need help?
If you are unsure why your mailbox is full, or if you need help increasing the mailbox size, please contact the Fastnet Helpdesk.
When contacting us, please provide the affected email address and any error message you have received.