Getting Email on Your iPhone Using Your Domain

NOTE: This article was written while thinking about the iPhone – but it should also work for your iPod Touch. Just work someplace where you have a good WiFi connection. Additionally, since I wasn’t actually looking at an iPod Touch when I wrote it there may be some menu differences I didn’t consider. If you find any, let me know and I’ll edit the article!

I admit it. I had problems setting up my iphone and getting mail on it from a non-mobileme email. If you are reading this, you are probably experiencing some issues too. Here is a quick overview:

1. If you are getting a “can’t get email” or “can’t connect” error – your POP (Incoming) information is wrong.
2. If you are getting a “can’t send mail” problem – something is wrong in your SMTP settings.
3. Work on only one problem at a time to stay less confused. 
4. Sounds strange, but turn off your iphone and then turn it back on. This seemed to help on occasion.

I found there were a few things that were causing me some problems. Here is an outline of how to set up your iphone for mail. I’ll point out the pitfalls I encountered as I explain.

Get Ready!

You will need the following bits of information to set up your account. I’ll tag these with brackets so the areas are easy to reference when we hit the next section.

Email Address: i.e. <EMAIL-ADDRESS>

Domain Name: i.e. <DOMAIN-NAME>(Usually this is the part AFTER the @ symbol in your email address. If your email was [email protected] your domain name is “pettyheartbreakers.com”.

User Name: i.e. <USER-NAME> Case sensitive (Usually, this is the part in front of the @ in your email). If your email was [email protected] your user name is probably “tom”.

Password: i.e. <PASSWORD> Case sensitive (If you don’t know your password, call your provider or call me if I’m your provider. If I’m not your provider, I can’t help you. 😉 )

Incoming Mail Server: also called POP: i.e. <INCOMING> (This is what retrieves your mail)

Outgoing Mail Server: also called SMTP: i.e. <OUTGOING>(This is what sends your email) 

Set!

1. Go to “Settings” –> “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”
2. Select “Add Account” and select “other” and fill in the information as follows
   • Name: Your Name
   • Address: [email protected]
   • Password: <PASSWORD> 
   • Description: This can be anything that makes sense to you. I.E. Work email, home, etc.
3. Select “Save”. 
4. Select “Pop” (If you aren’t sure which you have, chances are you have a pop account. If you had an IMAP account, you probably know it.)
5. Incoming Mail Server
• Host Name: <DOMAIN-NAME> (pettyheartbreakers.com or mail.pettyheartbreakers.com).
• User Name: <USER-NAME>
• Password: <PASSWORD>
6. Outgoing Mail Server 
   • Host Name: <DOMAIN-NAME> (pettyheartbreakers.com or smtp.pettyheartbreakers.com)
   • User Name and Password: (Not required. This is for SSL accounts only. If you don’t know if you have one, you probably don’t. None of my clients have one.)
7. Select “Save”

Verifying the Info

• Now your iphone is going to try to verify. This is the part where it it says “Cannot Connect using SSL. Do you want to try setting up the account without SSL?”. Tell it YES.
• If you get another error, you may have typed something in wrong in the “Incoming Mail Server”. We will test the “Outgoing Mail Server” later.
• You may also get “The certificate for “email address’ may not be valid. Just tell it to continue. 

If all that went well, you should be taken back to the “Mail, Contact, Calendar” screen. If not, keep checking to make sure you typed things in correctly. Remember your name and password could be CASE SENSITIVE!

Checking your SMTP Settings

This is the section that controls what SENDS your mail. You can have any number of SMTPs to choose from, but you really only need one per account. If all your email is on the same server, you only need one SMTP.

1. From the “Mail, Contact, Calendar” screen, select the account you just created.
2. Scroll all the way down until you see “Outgoing Mail Server”. 
3. Select the “SMTP smtp<DOMAIN-NAME>.com
4. Take a look at what is in there.

When I first did this, I had let iTunes sync all of my email accounts and it put in all kinds of extra SMTP. Also, it has the AT&T server that I don’t need because I’m using my own domain. What I found was a bunch of stuff that I didn’t need and it was all trying to send mail at once and gumming up the works. Here is what I did to simply  things.

1. In iTunes (while your iphone is plugged in) go to the “Info” tab and deselect “Sync selected Mail accounts”. In theory this should all work, but for me it didn’t go smoothly and worked better setting up manually. They may have it fixed now, but at the time, it was easier for me to deselect that.
2. On your iphone (see step 4 previously) turn OFF all the smtp servers except for your Primary Server (which should be the one we just set up. If it all goes smoothly, you can delete the others or just leave them.

Testing

Now it’s time to make sure it is all working.

1. Go back to your home page on you iphone, navigate and select your Mail icon. 
2. In your list of accounts select the account we just set up. 
3. Click the icon in the lower right corner to send a message. Send it to yourself at the email address you just set up. 
4. If you get an error that says “cannot send” something is wrong with your SMTP settings.
5. If you get an error that says “cannot retrieve” something is wrong with your POP settings.
6. Try turning your iphone off and back on.

GO!

You should be all set and be armed to create as many email addresses as you need on your iphone! If you have a specific problem that I didn’t outline here, drop me a line with the error message and I’ll see if I can help.