How to use your Plusnet email
All you need to know about using and managing your Plusnet email account.
Email guide
Read on for more help getting to grips with your email account. You'll be a pro in no time.
A Plusnet email address looks like this: something@username.plus.com. You can use lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), underlining, hyphens or full stops in your Plusnet email address.
The three parts are:
- something – this can be anything you like, but most people use their first name or their initials
- username – this is your account username and will stay the same for any extra Plusnet email addresses you set up. Your username isn't something you can change later
- plus.com – remember it's plus.com, not plus.net. (For those of you who've been with us a while, the last part of your email address might be '.force9.co.uk' or '.free-online.net'.)
So, if your name's Andrew and your account username is Smith, your email address might be: andrew@smith.plus.com
When everything's set up, you can use Plusnet email on your computer, smartphone or through our website. Here's how.
- On your computer – use an email program on your computer, like Outlook, Mac Mail or Thunderbird
- On your mobile – if you've got a smartphone, like an iPhone or Android, you can use that to check and send emails
- Using our Webmail service – send and receive emails using Webmail through our website
Need a bit more help with any of these? Have a look at How to set up Plusnet email.
You can get to your email account at any time:
- Go to the Member Centre
- Log in with your Plusnet username and password
- Click on Email Settings (it's on the menu, on the left)
- Click Manage My Mail - this'll show your settings
- Or you can head over to or email.plus.net and log in from there
When you get to your Plusnet email account, you'll see six main sections. Here's what they are and what they're for.
- Summary – a list of all your email addresses with us. Next to each one, you'll see what type it is (e.g. 'Alias')
- Mailboxes – add, rename, edit or delete email addresses
- Aliases – add, edit or remove alias email addresses
- Redirects – add, edit or remove redirect email addresses
- Spam – decide what you want to do with spam (junk) emails that might land in your inbox. Take a look at How to protect your email account from junk mail
- Catch All – turn this service on or off and choose which email address you want all your emails to go to
Keep reading for more info about these sections and how to do the things we've mentioned here.
For every email address that you have, you have a separate inbox. That email address with its own inbox is known as a mailbox. Having a separate mailbox is handy if you want someone in your family to have their own email address on your account. Aliases and redirects are a bit different - check out the sections below for more info.
You can have more than one mailbox and each one has its own username and password. If you'd like to add another mailbox – so another email address with its own inbox – you can do that by going to Manage My Mail, clicking on Mailboxes and then clicking on the red button that says Add New Mailbox.
When you add an extra mailbox, you'll need to choose a new name to use in the email address and a new password. So if you choose Robert, your email address will be robert@smith.plus.com
The name you choose will be part of your mailbox username. A mailbox username looks like this: username+mailboxname, so our example here will be smith+robert. When you first add an extra mailbox, we'll send you an email to confirm your username.
When you're all set up, you'll need to sign in to your new mailbox using your email application (like Outlook) on your computer, your smartphone, or Webmail. If you're not sure how to do that, have a look at How to set up Plusnet email.
An alias is an email address in name only: emails sent to aliases get delivered to whichever mailbox you choose.
Say you've got your email address, andrew@smith.plus.com. You could choose an alias called john@smith.plus.com and point it at the andrew@smith.plus.com mailbox. Any emails you then send to the John Smith email address will land in the Andrew Smith inbox. The alias just gives you another email address to use for the same mailbox.
To read emails sent to your alias email address, log in to your email account using the username and password for the mailbox you've pointed the alias to.
To set up an alias, go to Manage My Mail and click on Aliases.
If you've got a Plusnet alias email address, the emails sent to it can only land in another Plusnet inbox. You wouldn't be able to forward messages to an external email address like Hotmail. That's where redirects come in. For example, you can set up a redirect by clicking on Redirects in Manage My Mail so that your Plusnet emails are automatically sent to your Hotmail inbox.
You won't be able to set up a redirect with the same email address as an alias or mailbox that already exists. If you'd like to do this, you'll need to delete the existing alias or mailbox first. Remember if you delete a mailbox you'll also be deleting all its emails.
Normally, if someone sends an email to a mailbox that doesn't exist, the email will bounce back to the sender. Not great. This usually happens when someone makes a mistake in typing an email address. To stop that happening, you can switch on Catch All. When you do that, email addresses sent to any email address with your username at the end – anything@yourusername.plus.com – would land safely in your inbox.
Catch All is also handy if you don't want to set up lots of aliases or redirects, but you do want to give people different email addresses to use to contact you. A word of warning though, doing that can increase the chances that you'll get spam (junk mail), because spammers often target random email addresses.
To turn on Catch All, go to Manage My Mail and click on Catch All. You can always turn it off later, if you want.
Yes, you can do that using our Webmail page – all you need to do is log in. The handy thing about Webmail, is that you can get at your email from any computer that's got an Internet connection. It's secure, too, so there's no need to worry.
You can also get your email on your smartphone or tablet when you're on the move. If you're having problems with that, it might be because you need to switch on 'SMTP authentication' (not our phrase - that's just something that lets us know you're a Plusnet customer). For help doing that, have a look at How to set up Plusnet email.
You can do that in Manage My Mail, by clicking on the email address you want to edit or delete – so if you wanted to change an alias, click on Aliases. You'll be able to change everything before the @ symbol. If you aren't sure what type your email address is, look at your Summary and click on the link that's next to the email address you're changing. Then follow the steps and save your changes at the end. Remember that if you're deleting a mailbox, you'll also delete all its emails and any aliases linked to it.
If you're often going over 1GB for all your mailboxes combined, we might have to ask you to delete or archive some of your emails as lots of people with lots of big mailboxes can slow the service down. You can check your usage on Webmail. Just follow these steps.
- Click Personal Settings
- Then choose Folders
- Click on the folder you want to check
- To see the size of the folder, choose Click to get folder size
If you want to know more about Webmail, take a look at How to use Webmail.
We know spam or junk mail can be really annoying, so all Plusnet email accounts have anti-spam protection. It deletes the most obvious spam before it gets to your inbox. It also moves emails that might be spam to a separate folder so you can check whether they're spam or not. You can do that using Webmail.
Tip: remember to check your spam folder for genuine emails that might end up in there by mistake.
If you want to change any of your anti-spam settings, you can find out how to do that in How to protect your email account from junk mail.
For a reminder of your account username, check the welcome email or letter we sent you when you joined Plusnet or set up your Plusnet email address. If you can't find it, get in touch with us.
If it's your password you've forgotten, enter your broadband account username or email address on our Forgot your password page and follow the steps.
If you need to change your password, you can go to the change your password page.
A mailbox username looks like this: account username+mailbox name.
For a reminder of your username, check the email we sent when you created it.
You'll have chosen your password when you created the mailbox. If you're not sure what it is, reset it by logging in to Manage My Mail.
If you're having trouble, don't worry. We'll do our best to sort it out if you get in touch.
Just one thing before you get in touch – we'll be able to help more quickly if you can tell us a few things:
- What's the problem?
- Which email application are you using? Examples are Outlook and Mac Mail
- Which email addresses are you having problems with?
- Have you changed any email settings recently?
- If you've been getting error messages, what have they said?
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