I have my own domain and use that as my main email address. All hosted by
123-Reg. Everything on that account paid up to date.
Also another email address with BT. That is working normally.
About 4 days ago, couldn't access 123-reg to download emails. Same on all my computers.
Their help line said they'd sent me an email saying the incoming POP server would no longer work this September, and I should change it to IMAP. Just use the migrate button next to my email on their site and it would sort it.
Except it didn't.
My various email addresses at 123-reg get forwarded to
**@pophost.123-reg.co.uk and that's what (I assume) I get them from.
Changing that forward address to my BT one, allows me to get any new emails, but not see the ones on the server, from the last few days.
I'm also not sure if Webmail should work with this account as I've only just tried it. But can't log into that either.
I set all this up years ago, and it's all a mystery now.
Reading between the lines a bit here, are you sure they were not referring to the ancient "pophost" server rather than the pop server? (which to be fair I though had been killed off years ago)
123 have gone through a multitude of email offerings over the years, and offer (or have offered) a number of different types of mailbox. So what you have will depend a bit on when it was setup.
Configuration of email addresses and their linking to mailboxes has also "evolved". In the early days you got mailboxes when you bought web hosting. They then gave you a run of mailboxes in the form "accountname-<n>@domainname.co.uk". So unless your user wanted to change their name to accountname-4 (or whatever) you needed a forward setup to deliver mail for snipped-for-privacy@domainname.co.uk to snipped-for-privacy@domainname.co.uk. (ISTR pophost was weaved into that somewhere as well)
Later iterations allowed you to create mailboxes with any name you wanted, and miss out the extra forwarding step. (although you can get a bit more flexibility if you include it - since you can then split of copies of incoming mail to multiple mailboxes and other mail providers if wanted).
So you should[1] be able to access any of the mailboxes using IMAP or POP3 (and Webmail) using the imap.123-reg.co.uk and pop.123-reg.co.uk servers.
[1] there may be cases I have not encountered where this is not true!
How are you accessing the mailbox - in particular what mail servers are you using?
What does their email control panel show you for your domain? Does it list mailboxes?
What mail software are you using?
If you setup the software to access imap.123-reg.co.uk or pop.123-reg.co.uk you should be able to access the mailbox. Both should show you the full content.
Note that pop3 can only access the content in the root folder of a mailbox. IMAP allows you to create sub folders in it. Any mail placed into one of those can't usually then be recovered by POP3.
POP3 may also be configured to remove mail from a mailbox once it has downloaded it (or it can be set to "leave" it on the server for a period of time or indefinitely). The leave on the server option was an attempt to get POP3 to play nice for users with multiple mail client/platforms. In reality IMAP does a better job for them usually.
It should be able to...
123-reg mail is always a bit of a mystery IME (speaking as someone who has used it for over 20 years)!
(feel free to email me direct if you need specific help)
I use 123-Reg to forward emails to other email accounts such as ISP, Gmail, and a Raspberry Pi with an email system on it. I pay 123-Reg by direct debit to avoid the credit card expiry problem.
No. On logging on to the 123-reg site, they'd set up a 'button' to migrate things from the POP to IMAP servers. No mention anywhere of POPhost.
Many many years ago. So long ago I don't remember anything about it. ;-)
You'd have thought the very helpful chap on the help line would have known if my POPhost box was no longer supported too, and offered a solution.
I'm using both RISCOS and PC clients. POPstar on RISCOS it seems will have to be changed for a different one that can do imap. ThunderBird on the PCs should be OK.
Neither can access **@pophost.123-reg.co.uk, which my various boxes on
123-reg were forwarded to.
Before all this, I downloaded and deleted emails on the server using POPstar. As I keep all my wanted emails on the RISCOS machine, as it has a archiving system I'm used to. So only ever viewed them on the PCs or phone.
123-reg have said they have passed on the problem to their most qualified people, and I should have an answer early this week.
The way it was setup years ago, was 123-Reg forwarded all my email addresses (with them) to a single one *******@pophost.123-reg.co.uk which is what I downloaded via an email client. It's this which no longer works.
Do you own more than one domain? If so then after 1/9/2021 the 123-reg email quite clearly states that everything that you ever had will be trashed into oblivion and you should have manually migrated before then.
Due to holidays I found myself doing it on 30th August and expecting the worst but it was pretty much a non-event with the migration of each domain and its email aliasses being declared all OK. They even worked afterwards which was a pleasant surprise. Several were .. prehistoric.
You really should have been paying more attention to their emails. There were repeated warnings about what dire things would would happen if you did nothing from something like the past six months.
OK I only did something about it in the last couple of days prior to the final D-day but that is down to my inclination to leave things alone so long as they continue to work.
They seemed happy enough to renew my subscription for a year from June.
The helpline claim they emailed me about this. I've got emails here from them going back years. Nothing about what you say above.
I've done the same - using the migrate facility on their website. But couldn't receive any emails afterwards. Until I changed the forward address from *********@pophost.123-reg.co.uk to my BT one.
Just to clarify. The ********* of the pophost address is my 123-reg username. And have a password. The email client then accessed
******@pophost.123-reg.co.uk and downloaded everything in it.
Not here, there weren't.
The 123 site also said they'd do automatic migration.
all mine use pop.123-reg.co.uk (port 110) and I didn't know there was a pophost.123-reg.co.uk
I use POP on my PC - I have several different email addresses separated for purpose (personal, music, politics, etc) and two different domains all mapped onto my hosting package on 123-reg whose original domain name I don't use visibly, as such.
I use IMAP on some of those email accounts which I have set up on my mobile phone to use when out and about. That uses imap.123-reg.co.uk (port 993 for SSL/TLS).
There were some changes to the DNS records not so long ago. All a bit confusing. Partly because my hosting package was on the legacy Supanames hosting which was taken over by 123-reg years ago. Some of the settings became defunct and the MX servers changed in the DNS record.
Don't know if that info is helpful, but in summary: I've always managed to get it working when problems or changes have arisen, which has been a couple of times over the years.
Note you actually mention the pophost server below "Neither can access
**@pophost.123-reg.co.uk"
Hence my question about what is showing in the control panel when you go to "Mail" for the domain in question.
It might be you have a mailbox type I am not aware of, but on the face of it that does not really make any sense to me, since a modern mailbox should be accessible via POP3 or IMAP.
Alas 123 are especially clueless when it comes to their mail system IME
- and frequently don't appear to understand exactly how it works!
I thought the pophost.123-reg.co.uk server was retired ages ago...
OK so that looks like it is/was using a pophost mailbox of some kind...
Now it has been converted I would be tempted to try a test setup in thunderbird like this:
Do a manual setup: Use your email address, set the server to imap.123-reg.co.uk, *but* set the username to "*******@pophost.123-reg.co.uk" and not your email address (which is what most mail software would assume)
See if that works.
If not then see if you can create a proper mailbox rather than a forward. Typically that list shows both "forwards" and also mailboxes. Do you have a create dropdown at the top? There are typically options to create a forward and also a mailbox.
See if it lets you create a mailbox - call it something like dave.mailbox (you may find it will let you create what it calls "free" mailboxes (i.e. you had/have a product that bundled mailboxes), or it might encourage you to pay for one!)
If you can do that, then you can change the forward to deliver to that (i.e. forward to dave.mailbox@<yourdomain> - it can forward to a comma separated list of addresses - so it could go to that 123-reg mailbox and the BT one)
Once that is in place you can then set a mail client to access that mailbox via POP3 or IMAP as you see fit. Again you would need to specify the mailbox name as a user name in place of the actual email address. Or you can use webmail (login with the name of the mailbox and not the email address)
If all that works, you could elect to delete the forward altogether, and just create a mailbox with a name matching the email address. That removes a bit of complexity from configuring desktop software since its default assumption that the username matches the email address will then be correct.
I suggest you look back through your logs. Mine came in 14/4/2021 and there were monthly reminders after that becoming ever more insistent.
Content below:
--start-- Dear Martin,
As part of our continuous commitment to improving our products and services, we will stop supporting the use of Popbox email accounts from
1st September 2021.
To ensure that there is no disruption with your email, we recommend that you manually migrate from Popbox to a new 123 Reg Mailbox, which provides better spam and anti-virus protection. This will allow you to:
control the timing of your migration, make any changes to the settings in your mail client after migration, select which domain to assign your Mailbox(es) to if you have multiple domains within your 123 Reg account.
If you do not currently have a domain with 123 Reg, you will need to purchase a new domain for your Mailbox(es) or transfer a domain over from another provider.
If you do not wish to be moved to a Mailbox plan, please cancel your Popbox(es) before 1st September 2021. If you have not manually migrated or cancelled your Popbox(es) before this date, we will automatically migrate your Popbox(es) for you where possible.
How do I manually migrate? For detailed information on how to manually migrate, please see our Popbox migration FAQ.
If you currently own a large number of Popboxes that you wish you migrate to a single domain, contact our support team who can further assist you. [snip]
--end--
Somewhere else there is one that says if we can't work out what to do with your multi-domain email accounts we will trash the lot - which seemed unduly harsh to me but that is what I recall it said (even if it wasn't strictly true). You should have had plenty of warning.
FWIW there still seems to be a performance problem on their new "improved" email platform. It sometimes spends ages sitting there at busy times just like the ancient one it replaced. :(
But only if you have a single domain with them. Even then they strongly recommended that you migrate manually rather than allow the default action. I have been burnt more than once by the demise of ISPs and "upgrades" to email servers with disastrous unintended consequences.
I hope Voodoofone's ears are burning after what they did to Demon.
The snag here was selecting manage email on my control panel showed a very different page from that on their video. With none of the choices needed to do things.
I've bought their current standard email package, but (after paying for it) tells me I can't use my email address there as I already have a mailbox for that.
Thinking it might be a password problem I looked on how to change that. Same problem - the choices menu required to do that doesn't exist on my manage email page.
The other odd thing is my user name there. In the dim and distant past ISTR having to up the security of that (I simply added a -1 to it) And that's the user name which worked for downloading mails. But the account details still show the old one.
My login details for the site are different again. User name my wanted email address and a unique password, different to my email one which worked in the past.
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