I Can Send Emails but Not Receive Them — Troubleshooting Guide

I Can Send Emails but Not Receive Them — Troubleshooting Guide

If you can send emails but cannot receive them, the cause is almost always DNS, mail routing, a full mailbox, or a filter — not your email app. Work through the checks below in order, starting with the most common cause, and most problems can be fixed without contacting support.

Start by Testing in Webmail

Before changing any settings, log into webmail at yourdomain.com/webmail (or webmail.yourdomain.com) and try to send and receive a test message from there.

• If webmail sends and receives normally, the mail server is working. The problem is with your email app (Outlook, Apple Mail, phone, etc.) — check the folder settings in that app, and make sure it is not filtering mail into a local folder
• If webmail can send but not receive, the cause is DNS, mail routing, quota or filter-related — go to If you can send but cannot receive emails below
• If neither webmail nor your email app can receive, the fault is on the server or DNS side, not the app — go straight to the same section

If You Can Send but Cannot Receive Emails

Check your MX records

MX records are DNS records that tell the internet which mail server should receive email for your domain. Sending uses a different part of your email setup, so it is entirely possible for MX records to be wrong while sending still works normally — this is the most common cause of this exact problem, especially after moving your domain to Hostking or changing hosts.

1. Check your current MX record at mxtoolbox.com by entering your domain name
2. Confirm it points to your hosting account's mail server, as shown in your welcome email or the client area at my.hostking.host
3. If it points elsewhere, for example a previous host, update the MX record in your control panel's DNS management section (cPanel: Zone Editor, under Domains; DirectAdmin: DNS Management, or the "Modify MX Records" page)
4. Check the Priority value for each MX record — lower numbers are tried first — and remove any duplicate or outdated entries

On DirectAdmin, the MX Records page has a checkbox labelled Use this server to handle my e-mails. If your mailboxes are hosted with Hostking, this box should be ticked; if it is unticked while the MX record still points to Hostking's server, incoming mail can fail without any error. If you use a third-party mail provider such as Microsoft 365, select that provider on the same page rather than entering MX records manually, as this sets up the required records automatically.

If your domain's DNS is managed somewhere else, for example at your registrar or through Cloudflare, the MX record must be corrected there instead — changes inside your Hostking control panel will not take effect while external DNS is in use.

Check mail routing is set to local (cPanel)

On cPanel accounts, if mail routing for your domain is set to "Remote" instead of "Local," the server will refuse incoming mail for that domain even though outgoing mail is unaffected.

1. Log into cPanel and open Email Routing
2. Select your domain from the list
3. Make sure it is set to Local Mail Exchanger, not Remote Mail Exchanger, unless you intentionally use an outside mail provider

Check your mailbox quota

If your mailbox is full, new emails will bounce back to the sender instead of arriving, while you can usually still send. This is one of the most common causes of "receiving silently fails."

• cPanel: go to Email Accounts, find your address and check the storage used; click Change Quota to increase it, or delete old emails to free up space
• DirectAdmin: go to E-Mail Accounts and check the quota column next to your address; delete old emails or increase the quota if needed

Check forwarders and filters

A forwarder or filter can silently redirect or delete incoming mail without you noticing, which looks exactly like not receiving anything. In cPanel, check Forwarders and both Filters and Global Email Filters under the Email section. In DirectAdmin, check Forwarders and Email Filters under the Email section.

On DirectAdmin accounts, enabling a forwarder has in some cases stopped mail being received at all in webmail until the forwarder was disabled again. If you have a forwarder set up and receiving stopped around the same time, try disabling it as a test.

Check your spam or junk folder

Mail can be accepted by the server but routed to a spam or junk folder instead of your inbox, which feels identical to not receiving it. Check both your email client's spam folder and your webmail spam folder, as they are separate folders on the server. If emails are landing there, mark them as "Not Spam" and add the sender to your contacts; on Hostking's servers, Imunify360 also scans mail traffic, so also check for any quarantine notices from it.

Check for recent DNS or domain changes

If you recently moved your domain to Hostking or changed nameservers, DNS propagation can take up to 24–48 hours. During this time some email may still be delivered to your old host, and this resolves itself once propagation finishes. Also confirm your domain itself has not expired, since an expired domain stops receiving mail entirely — check its status at mxtoolbox.com or with a WHOIS lookup.

If You Cannot Send Emails

Check your email client settings

Incorrect settings in your email app are the most common reason sending fails. Confirm your client matches the settings below, which you can also find in your welcome email or the client area.

• Incoming server: mail.yourdomain.com, IMAP (recommended) on port 993 or POP3 on port 995, both with SSL/TLS
• Outgoing (SMTP) server: mail.yourdomain.com on port 465 or 587, with SSL/TLS and authentication enabled
• Username: your full email address
• Password: your mailbox password, which is not the same as your control panel password

If the settings look correct but sending still fails, remove the account from your email app and add it again from scratch, rather than editing the existing entry.

Use Track Delivery to see the exact cause (cPanel)

cPanel's Track Delivery tool shows whether a message reached its destination and why it didn't, if it failed.

1. Log into cPanel and go to Email > Track Delivery
2. Enter the recipient's email address and click Run Report
3. Review the result for that message, such as Success, Deferred, Failure or Filtered

Common results and what they mean:

• Filtered — the server accepted the message but it didn't reach the inbox, often due to the recipient's spam filter or a rule on their end
• Invalid Recipient / No Such User Here — the address doesn't exist; check for typos, or confirm the address under Email Accounts if it's on your own domain
• Rejected — can include being listed on a real-time blacklist (RBL); see below

On DirectAdmin, check the Mail Queue Administration page under Email for messages that are stuck or queued, which can indicate a delivery problem.

Check for blacklisting or SPF/DKIM problems

If your messages are rejected by recipients' mail servers, your sending IP address may be listed on a spam blacklist, or your domain's SPF, DKIM or DMARC records may be missing or incorrect. These DNS records help other mail servers trust that your email is genuine.

If you suspect this, contact support with the bounce message so the team can check your sending reputation and DNS records.

Check if the Sender Got a Bounce

If someone else's email to you didn't arrive, ask them to check whether they received a bounce message, also called a Non-Delivery Report (NDR). The bounce message contains an error code that explains why the email wasn't delivered. Common reasons include:

• Mailbox full — your quota needs increasing
• User unknown — the email address doesn't exist, or there's a typo in it
• Rejected by spam filter — the spam filter is too aggressive
• Domain not found — your domain's DNS is not set up correctly

Still Not Working? Contact Support

Some causes, such as blocked mail ports, incorrect reverse DNS (PTR) records, or server-level blacklisting, can only be fixed by Hostking's support team. Open a support ticket from the client area at my.hostking.host, or use live chat, with the following details:

• Your email address
• The sender's or recipient's email address
• Approximate date and time the email was sent
• Any bounce message or error code received
• Whether the problem happens in webmail, in an email app, or both

Live chat is available 7 days a week, roughly 05:00–20:00 UTC, and support tickets can be submitted at any time from the client area.