How to change email server settings in Plesk

Question

Well, this question may be very silly and I'm not sure that this is the right place to ask it, so sorry if that's the case. Well, my doubt is as follows: I work with web development and to offer the hosting service as well, I've acquired a hosting resell. My problem is that the email server has default server names: for both POP and SMTP the address is just the domain of the hosting account.

Now, there are some customers that already have their websites hosted and want to purchase my service. In that case, I would greatly prefer to configure those names to match the one from the hosting they're coming from rather than making them change all the configurations they have in place.

For instance, if a customer comes from a hosting that uses "pop.domain" and "smtp.domain" I would like to make his account use those settings.

Now, my reseller account uses Windows environment with Plesk panel. My knowledge of servers is still limited (although I work with programming, I don't deal to much with servers), so I don't really know if that's possible.

Is it possible to configure this? If not possible for each account, is it possible to configure this globally? How can it be done?

Thanks very much in advance!

Answer 1

That's not a silly question, and you're asking in the right place - webmasters manage control panels too.

I think what you're asking is for each domain name to have their own mail server names, like:

mail.company.com

mail.company2.com

mail.company3.com

The same mail server name can be used for both incoming and outgoing mail (e.g., mail.domain.com instead of smtp.domain.com and pop.domain.com), which makes what you're trying to do a little easier.

This requires that each domain have their own custom nameserver(s), often referred to as "vanity nameservers", like:

ns.company.com

Those nameservers can then point to "CNAME" records for their own incoming and outgoing mail servers (e.g., mail.company.com). If you're using the default settings in Plesk, this should be done for you automatically when you create a domain account. That is, under DNS Settings in each domain account, you should see at least one ns.domain.com and one mail.domain.com.

If not, you can do this manually under DNS Settings for each domain account. Or you can setup a Domain Template at the system-level (with administrative permissions) and apply that template to all accounts.

Here's a link to demonstrate how: How to Configure the DNS Template Settings in Plesk

Using that as a reference point, you should see <mail.domain> in there already (it's there by default). Optional: You can add a second nameserver (e.g., ns2.company.com) there by adding both an NS record and an A record. Use the existing nameserver fields as examples of what values to add (click on the existing ones to see their values). Just use ns2. instead of ns. for the second NS record.

After you confirm the DNS template is setup properly, select the option to apply this to all domains. If you have any issues, you can always revert to the default template there.

A good source of solutions for Plesk is their forum and knowledge base. The following tutorials might also be helpful: Plesk How To's