Frequently Asked Questions

Neomailbox is perfect for individuals, families, groups and small businesses who want a fast, secure and reliable email service.

Neomailbox is designed to be easy to use, and to provide a high level of privacy protection by default. Support for standard email protocols such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP enables you to upgrade your email privacy and security while continuing to use your preferred email software.

Neomailbox services include Offshore Secure Email, with TLS, IMAP, POP3, SMTP and OpenPGP support, Private Surfing, which protects your privacy as you surf the web, and mail hosting for your domain.

The Offshore Privacy Combo service provides both Offshore Secure Email and Private Surfing in a single discounted subscription. For families, groups and small businesses, we offer Multi-Pack subscriptions which include multiple accounts.

Neomailbox is one of the longest-established and most reliable independent email services, with a solid privacy and reliability track record over 22 years of continuous operation.

Neomailbox doesn't rely on big tech cloud services, fragile or proprietary software systems, customer tracking, or AI gimmicks. Instead, time-tested old-school engineering principles guide the design and execution of our infrastructure and services.

Developed and operated by Internet security professionals with an unwavering dedication to online privacy and free speech, Neomailbox prioritizes simplicity, reliability and security.

There are many options for email services on the Net, but only a few options for long-established, independent, secure and reliable email services. And, as far as we know, there is no other email service that combines the highest level of technical expertise with the real dedication to user privacy that Neomailbox provides.

In addition, because Neomailbox is designed to fit in to your existing workflow, it's easy to upgrade your email privacy and reliability without missing a beat.

The Neomailbox Secure Email service doesn't require any specific software download. It is compatible with most email programs, including those that come pre-installed with most operating systems, such as Mail for MacOS, and Outlook for Windows.

The NeoTunnel Private Surfing service does require a small open source utility to be downloaded and installed on your computer.

Yes, with optional Custom Domain Hosting, you can connect your domain to your Neomailbox Secure Email account, which will enable you to send and receive mail using any address @yourdomain.

Yes, Neomailbox accounts include sophisticated spam protection that rejects most spam while ensuring that all legitimate mail arrives in your mailbox. All mail that is delivered to your mailbox also has a spam score header, which can be used to further filter potential spam.

Importantly, unlike the vast majority of email services, Neomailbox never silently places messages in a Junk folder with no notification to the sender. Messages are either delivered to your Inbox, or bounced back to the sender. This ensures you never miss legitimate messages because they disappeared into a Junk folder.

Here are a couple of things to check:

Make sure you're using your correct username and password. Remember the password is case-sensisitive.

Don't type your full Neomailbox email address in the username field, but only the first part before the "@neomailbox.net".

Make sure you're trying to log in to the correct Control Panel for your account. The Control Panel for most accounts can be accessed via the "Log In" button at the top right of every page on the Neomailbox site. For accounts that were originally hosted in the USA, the login page is here

There are other reasons you may not be able to access the Control Panel - your account may have expired, or may have been disabled for violating our acceptable use policy. Please contact support for more information. Be sure to specify your username.

You can view your account's mailbox space usage in the Control Panel for your account. From the Control Panel you can also order additional disk space, or upgrade to a higher mailbox size.

You can change your account's passwords in the Control Panel for your account. There are three separate passwords for each account: the Control Panel password, the IMAP/POP3 password, and the SMTP password.

The Control Panel password is used only to log in to the Control Panel, and it should be different from your IMAP/POP3 password and your SMTP password.

The IMAP/POP3 password is for accessing mail via the IMAP or POP3 protocols. It is also used to log in to Webmail.

The SMTP password is for sending mail. It can be the same as your IMAP/POP3 password, or different. If you would like to be able to send mail from the Webmail system, your SMTP password must be the same as your IMAP/POP3 password.

You can request a password reset link to be sent to your Password Recovery Email Address from the "Forgot Password?" link on the Log In page.

You will receive an email with a password reset link at your Alternate Email Address, which you can visit to reset your Control Panel password.

Once you've reset your Control Panel password, you can reset your IMAP and SMTP passwords from the Control Panel.

As the password reset mechanism relies on your Alternate Email Address, it is important to always have a current and working email address set as your Alternate Email Address.

Neomailbox enables sending and receiving messages using your favourite email program over a secure link, and provides secure webmail access to your mailbox, including client-side OpenPGP encryption for end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging.

Your mailbox is stored fully encrypted on secure servers in a high-security data center located in a country with strong data privacy laws. Neomailbox also adheres to strict security principles in all its operations and when providing customer support, to protect against "social engineering" attacks.

It's important to note that your email is protected from surveillance only while in transit between your email program and our servers. If the message originated from or is sent to an address outside Neomailbox, then it may pass through the Internet as clear text, unless you use OpenPGP (which is available in our webmail system) or another encryption system to encrypt the content of your messages.

Messages sent to another Neomailbox user never pass through the Internet as clear text.

Many other email services also now support "opportunistic encryption" when receiving and sending messages. Mail sent to or received from users on these services also does not pass through the Internet as clear text, though it may still be subject to surveillance or security risks at the other email service.

If you would like to make sure that messages you exchange with people at other email services are protected in transit and while stored in your correspondents' mailboxes, you can use OpenPGP encryption (available in the Neomailbox webmail system), which encrypts the text of your messages using the encryption keys of the intended recipients.

In addition, Neomailbox does not process your emails through any external services, or share any of your data with anyone.

To minimize the amount of personal information we collect, we accept and prefer payment through digital currencies, which provide customers a much higher level of privacy protection than credit card payments.

We have accepted digital currencies since we first launched our services in July 2003. Originally we accepted gold-backed digital currencies such as e-gold and Pecunix. Since 2013 we have accepted Bitcoin.

We require zero personally identifiable information (PII) when you sign up for an account using Bitcoin. This enables the creation of completely anonymous accounts.

In addition, our servers strip your IP address from outgoing email message headers so that recipients of your messages can't see your real IP address, providing another layer of privacy.

Every Neomailbox account also includes an unlimited number of email addresses at its own unique subdomain. This provides another mechanism to safeguard your privacy, enabling you to use different email addresses for different purposes and correspondents. You don't need to reveal your main email address to untrusted entities, or to anyone.

To further protect customer privacy, we do not have any external cookies or trackers on our website. For website visitor analytics, we rely on open source software hosted on our own servers, rather than Google Analytics.

TLS encryption protects message headers (From, To, Subject fields) and bodies from interception on the way to and from the mail server.

This part of the route is critical for email privacy since this is when local entities like your company, your ISP, or local government agencies can monitor or even modify your mail without your knowledge.

Even if you use PGP or a similar program to encrypt your messages, these programs usually leave email headers (also known as "metadata") in the clear, and this metadata can provide a lot of information about who you're communicating with and the subject of your messages.

TLS encryption also secures your account credentials when your email program communicates with the email server, so they can't be stolen and used to gain unauthorized access to your account.

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Email programs like Apple Mail and MS Outlook (also known as MUAs - Mail User Agents) use this protocol to communicate with MTAs (Mail Transfer Agents) to send email messages.

Neomailbox uses TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption to protect messages on their way from your email program to the mail server, assuring that your messages can't be read on the way from your email program to the Neomailbox servers.

Further, our SMTP servers are configured to strip out your real IP address before sending your messages out. Thus, recipients of your messages don't see your real IP address.

Your IP address can reveal a lot of information about you and also provide attackers with a way to target your computer for attack. This makes hiding your IP address in outgoing mail an important privacy consideration when sending mail.

IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol v3) are standard protocols used by email software to retrieve email messages from a mail server.

Our servers use TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption to secure email messages while in transit, so your incoming messages can't be intercepted or tampered with on the way from the Neomailbox server to your email program.

TLS encryption replaced the older SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption protocol, which was used for the same purpose previously.

Yes, all mailboxes are stored on encrypted disks on the servers. Thus, even if physical security to the servers was to be compromised, the attackers would not be able to get at any of the data on the disks as it is all encrypted.

We also provide the ability to auto-encrypt incoming messages with your PGP public key, which ensures that only you can decrypt the messages saved in your mailbox.

Your IP address is sensitive private information that can be easily misused if revealed indiscriminately.

Knowing your IP address enables malicious crackers and criminals to attack your PC, and facilitates surveillance and tracking of your online activities. Your IP address can also be used to identify your geographical location with reasonable accuracy, often right down to your exact street address.

Your IP address uniquely identifies your computer or network on the Internet. It is private information that shouldn't be broadcast every time you send an email or visit a website, if you value your privacy and security.

Yes, your IP address is stripped out and will be not revealed in the message headers when you send mail through the Neomailbox SMTP servers.

We keep no logs or customer data other than what is absolutely necessary for performance tuning and security monitoring of our servers. Private Surfing logs contain only anonymized IP addresses and are wiped every 10 minutes. SMTP server logs are kept for a maximum of 6 months.

You can access POP3 without TLS encryption. On special request we can also enable non-TLS IMAP access. To make it difficult to inadvertently use the POP3 server in non-TLS mode, the non-TLS server is on a non-standard port (port 112).

Accessing your account without TLS enabled is highly discouraged. Accessing your account without TLS enabled compromises your account security. Your account credentials are considered compromised if you access your account without TLS enabled.

There could be a few reasons for this:

Make sure you are using the correct ports and settings. For IMAP you should use port 993 with SSL enabled, and for POP3, port 995 or port 110 with SSL enabled.

You could be using the wrong server name in your email client settings. The server name for IMAP or POP3 should be neomailbox.net for most users. Formerly US-hosted accounts should use the server name neomailbox.com instead. Make sure you're using the correct server name in your mail program's configuration.

Your account may have expired or been disabled. If you can't send mail either, it's possible that your account expired. You should still be able to log in to the Control Panel and check your account's status and renew it if necessary.

If you're unable to log in to the Control Panel either, contact support for assistance.

If you're able to send mail and log in to the Control Panel, but unable to retrieve your mail, contact support for assistance.

Your account is most likely over its mailbox disk quota. You can check your disk usage in the Control Panel for your account.

You should receive a warning email when you're getting close to your mailbox disk limit. Note however that fake messages about mailbox disk space limits are a common phishing tactic, and you should never click on any links in any such message. The legitimate disk quota warning message will not ask you to click on any links.

If you're able to log in to your account, but aren't receiving new mail, check your disk usage first. If your usage is over quota, new messages cannot be delivered to your account. To ensure that messages can be delivered to your account, you will need to either remove some messages from your mailbox to free up space, purchase additional disk space, or upgrade to a plan that includes more disk space.

You don't need to create them. You can just use any address @yoursubdomain as a valid email address. You will receive mail for any address of this form into your mailbox.

If you want to stop receiving mail for a specific address, you can block this address through the Control Panel for your account. Once you block a subdomain address mail for that address will be rejected by our servers. You can also unblock a blocked address at any time by removing it from the blocked aliases list in the Control Panel.

In the Neomailbox webmail system, you can set up multiple Identities under Preferences > Mail > Personal Information.

When you add a new identity with a new email address, a confirmation message will be sent to that email address to confirm that you own that address and can receive mail there.

Once you confirm the new email address it will be added to your list of identities and you will be able to select it as a From address when sending mail through the webmail system.

You can add any number of identities, and delete them as you like. Valid email addresses for identities include your subdomain alias addresses and your domain addresses (if your account is configured to use a custom domain).

Most email programs can also be set up so that you can select from among multiple identities for the "From:" header. Setting this up with Thunderbird is described in another question in this FAQ section.

You can add your subdomain or domain email addresses as sender addresses for your account in Thunderbird, as described below:

From the Thunderbird main menu select Tools -> Account Settings.

Click on the account name for the account you want to add identities to. Then click the "Manage Identities..." button.

From there you can Add a new email address for that account. This address will then be available as a "From:" address when you compose a message in Thunderbird.

Note that the only sender addresses the Neomailbox SMTP servers will accept are valid addresses for your account, i.e. your primary email address and your subdomain and domain addresses.

This error suggests have not enabled SMTP authentication in your email program. Authentication is required to prevent the abuse of our SMTP servers by spammers.

Enable SMTP authentication and provide your username and SMTP password to the email program. Then you should be able to send mail through the SMTP server.

For more information on how to enable SMTP authentication on your mail program, have a look at our install guides.

This is a message delay notification, and it is sent by Neomailbox SMTP servers to let you know when any of your messages are delayed for any reason. The mail body will contain the precise reason for the delay in delivering the message in question.

The servers are configured to send you message delay notifications quickly, so that you know about any delivery delays as soon as possible. You will receive a message delay notification if any message you sent has been delayed for 60 minutes.

Delivery attempts will continue automatically, and you're kept informed of any further delays with further delay notifications. If you don't receive a delay notification for any message within 1 hour, then you can be sure that the message was delivered.

Some mail servers use a method called "grey-listing" to combat spam, which involves temporarily rejecting an incoming message the first time a message is received from a previously unseen sending server, and accepting it on the next delivery attempt.

This can cause messages to sometimes be delayed for 60 minutes or more, which will result in your receiving a message delay notification. But this is usually nothing to be concerned about, unless you get repeated delay notifications for the same message over a period of time.

There could be a number of reasons for this. Here are a few things to check:

Make sure you are using the correct ports and settings. You should be using port 587 for SMTP, with TLS enabled. The TLS type, if you can select it, should be "STARTTLS" rather than "Alternate port".

Confirm that you're using the correct server name in your email client settings. The server name for IMAP or POP3 should be neomailbox.net for most users. Formerly US-hosted accounts should use the server name neomailbox.com instead.

Your account may have expired or been disabled. If you can't receive mail either, it's possible that your account expired. You should still be able to log in to the Control Panel and check your account's status and renew it if necessary.

If you're able to receive mail and log in to the Control Panel, but unable to send mail, your mail sending privileges may have been disabled for exceeding the default limits on outgoing mail. See the next question.

If you're unable to log in to the Control Panel, contact support for assistance.

If you can receive mail and log in to the Control Panel, but cannot send mail where you previously could with the same mail client configuration, your SMTP access may have been temporarily disabled for sending mail beyond the limits set for your account (see the FAQs about Account Limits).

With SMTP access disabled, incoming mail will still be received to your email client, but you can't send mail. Your account will be unable to authenticate to the SMTP server to send mail till your SMTP access is restored.

Contact support if you believe this to be the case, and we can reactivate your SMTP access if necessary.

In the webmail system, you can set up multiple From: email addresses for outgoing messages, by creating or editing Identities under Preferences > Mail > Personal Information.

When you add a new identity with a new email address, a confirmation message will be sent to that email address to confirm that you own that address and can receive mail there. Once you confirm the new email address it will be added to your list of identities and you will be able to select it as a From address when sending mail through the webmail system.

You can add any number of identities, and delete them as you like. Valid email addresses for identities include your subdomain alias addresses and your domain addresses (if your account is configured to use a custom domain).

Most email programs can also be set up so that you can select from among multiple identities for the "From:" header. Setting this up with Thunderbird is described in another question in the "Sending Mail" section of the FAQ. We're working on publishing more information about how to do this with other email programs.

In the Neomailbox webmail system, deleted messages are marked deleted (indicated by being greyed and crossed out in the message list) but they are not permanently deleted till you purge deleted messages from the mailbox. You can remove deleted messages permanently by clicking on Other > Purge Deleted at the top right of the message list.

From the webmail top menu bar, under "Preferences" (under the gear icon) select "Mail".

In the "Preferences for Mail" screen, click on "PGP" at the bottom of the rightmost column.

Click "Enable PGP Functionality" on the "PGP" screen and click "Save".

Then you can create or import PGP keys, and you will be able to sign / encrypt messages in the Compose screen, as well as read and verify PGP encrypted and signed messages that you receive.

Private Surfing provides a means for you to surf the web without revealing personally identifiable information.

Normally, when you surf the web you can be tracked by websites you visit, using your unique "IP address". Your IP address provides a lot of information about you, including your ISP, country and city. When co-related with ISP records, your IP address can pinpoint your precise identity.

Your IP address also provides a target for spammers, malware and identity thieves, who can use it to attack and break in to your computer.

With our Private Surfing service, you can surf the web without revealing your IP address to sites you visit. They will see the IP address of our servers, not of your computer. This provides security against tracking, profiling and break-in attempts against your computer.

Additionally, our Private Surfing service also secures your web surfing with TLS encryption, which secures your surfing against surveillance by your employer, neighbors, ISPs, and local authorities.

Another benefit of the Private Surfing service is that it circumvents locally imposed censorship. Surfing with Private Surfing enables access to sites that may be blocked or censored at your location.

All data exchanged between your computer and the NeoTunnel servers is encrypted before being transmitted to your ISP (Internet Service Provider), so your ISP can't access or read any of the data stream between your computer and our servers, or track which sites you are visiting.

When using NeoTunnel, Google will see you as a visitor from Switzerland, based on your IP address, and will redirect you to its Swiss site, google.ch. You can avoid this by visiting http://www.google.com/ncr.

When you visit this URL, Google will set a cookie so that there is No Country Redirect, and then when you access google.com, you will go to google.com.

However, from a privacy viewpoint, it would be better to switch from Google to a more privacy-friendly search engine, such as DuckDuckGo (duckduckgo.com).

Yes, you can access TLS secured sites through the NeoTunnel Private Surfing service.

NeoTunnel Private Surfing isn't currently available on iOS and Android devices. We are testing solutions for Private Surfing on these devices and will update this answer with more information soon.

There are plenty of free proxy services on the Net. However, it would be a mistake to rely on any of these for any level of security or privacy.

The main reason is that it's usually impossible to know if a given free proxy is trustworthy or not. Many free proxies are set up by spammers, phishers, and even surveillance agencies, to try to steal user login data or profile your actions as you surf through the proxy.

Other free proxies, while not run by malicious operators, may not be very secure, which can again lead to your sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.

A well-reputed commercial service, on the other hand, has a commitment and contractual obligation to customer privacy, and a reputation to protect.

Free proxies are also favored for abuse by spammers and criminals, which leads to them being quickly banned from many sites. A commercial service, in contrast, works hard to keep miscreants away, and protect its network from abuse.

Other aspects in which free proxies can be far less than optimal are speed and reliability of service.

Yes, all accounts are subject to limits on sending mail, to prevent abuse of our servers by spammers. The default limits are as follows:

Maximum recipients per message: 100

Maximum recipients per day: 1000

A recipient is any email address listed in the To, Cc or Bcc headers of the email, or specified via SMTP commands.

There are no limits for receiving mail, other than your mailbox size.

You can send and receive mail of any size, as long as you don't go over your recipient or mailbox size limits.

Attachments sent through the Webmail system are limited to a maximum of 20MB, but you can send attachments of any size using an email program.

However, keep in mind that email is not designed for the transfer of large files, and other email services may reject messages with very large attachments.

We sure do. We offer discounted Multi-Packs of five or ten accounts, which is a great option to get your family, friends or organization communicating securely. Additional accounts can be added on to a Multi-Pack at any time.

Indeed we do. If you're a non-profit or charitable organization of a non-religious nature, you can contact us to check if you might be able to avail of a 10% discount we can offer to qualifying non-profit and charitable organizations.

We offer an unconditional 30-day 100% money-back guarantee on all our services, so you can try any of our accounts risk-free for 30 days. If you decide you want to cancel your account within the first 30 days, just let us know and we will promptly issue you a full refund.

It's possible that there was some error in communication between the payment processor and our site, and your order did not get automatically entered into our database.

Don't worry though, because if your payment was successful at the payment site, we will receive email notification of your payment, and will get in touch with you as soon as possible to help you get your account set up.

You can also contact us at orders@neomailbox.com for assistance with ordering and account activation.

Yes, we provide tech support for Neomailbox services over email.

Urgent support requests reporting service disruption or significant issues affecting your account are addressed on a priority basis 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For non-urgent support requests, tech support is provided on an as-available basis. While we try to respond to every support ticket as soon as possible, usually within 2 business days, we cannot guarantee a response time for tech support requests.

Our services are quite straightforward to set up and use. There are detailed Install Guides for a variety of common email programs and web browsers, which provide complete directions to get going with our services.

Answers to most questions that come up frequently can be found in the FAQ.

Customers are encouraged to consult the support information available on the site, including the FAQ, before submitting a support request.

To assist us in responding to your query as quickly as possible, please write to us only in English, and please ask only one question per message. If you have three questions, please send three separate messages, each with one question.

Different questions may need to be answered by different people, and if you put them all together in one message, we cannot efficiently assign your questions to the people best suited to answer them.

We do not currently provide tech support over the phone. Tech support is available via email.