Troubleshoot Receiving Emails

If you're not receiving email through your Hover mailbox, there are a handful of common causes — an incorrect password, a misconfigured MX record, a blocked sender, a full mailbox, or a temporary server issue. This article walks you through checking each of these, in order, so you can pinpoint and resolve the issue.

Warning: If a domain is transferred away from Hover, mailboxes on that domain will no longer work with Hover's email service.

Before you begin

• Have your email address and password ready. You'll use these to sign in to webmail and confirm your credentials.
• Know whether you're a former VistaPrint customer. Former VistaPrint email accounts run on Hover's Enhanced Email Cluster B server and use a different webmail address and server settings, noted throughout this article.
• Be prepared to check your domain's DNS settings. Some steps require signing in to your Hover control panel.

Step 1: Verify Your Password in Webmail

Signing in to Hover webmail confirms whether your mailbox password is correct — an important first check before troubleshooting further.

1. Go to Hover's webmail portal. Note: Former VistaPrint accounts sign in at mail.b.hostedemail.com instead.
2. Enter your email address and password, then select Login.
3. If the login fails, see Updating Your Email Password to reset it.

Step 2: Confirm You Can Receive Mail in Webmail

This step determines whether the issue is limited to your email client or affects your mailbox more broadly.

1. Sign in to Hover's webmail portal (or mail.b.hostedemail.com for former VistaPrint accounts).
2. Check whether your expected emails appear in the webmail inbox.

Note: If the emails aren't in webmail either, the issue isn't specific to your email client — continue to the MX record and allowed-senders steps below. If the emails do appear in webmail, move on to Step 3 to check your email client's settings.

Step 3: Check Your Email Client's Server Settings

If email arrives in Hover webmail but not in your email client, confirm your client is using the correct server settings listed below, or see Mail Server Settings for Email Clients for full setup guides by client.

Note: Former VistaPrint customers are on Hover's Enhanced Email Cluster B server and use different settings:

Step 4: Confirm Your Domain's MX Record

Hover's MX record must be present in your domain's DNS settings for you to receive email.

1. Sign in to your Hover control panel using your chosen method of two-factor authentication.
2. From the domain's overview page, confirm which nameservers you're using. Note: If your nameservers don't point to Hover, a third-party provider manages your DNS — you'll need to add Hover's MX record wherever your DNS is managed instead.
3. If you're using Hover's nameservers, go to the DNS tab and confirm Hover's MX record is present.
4. If a non-Hover MX record is present instead, confirm it's not in use, then select the X beside it to remove it.
5. Select Add record, enter the MX record details below, then select New record. Note: DNS changes can take up to 24–48 hours to fully propagate.

Step 5: Add the Sender to Your Allowed Senders List

If you're not receiving messages from one specific address, adding it to your allowed senders list lets it bypass the spam filter automatically.

1. Sign in to Hover's webmail portal (or mail.b.hostedemail.com for former VistaPrint accounts).
2. Click Settings in the vertical menu, then Spam settings.
3. Enter the address in the Allowed senders field and click Save. Tip: To allow every address from one domain, enter an asterisk before the @ symbol — for example, *@example.com.

Step 6: Check Your Mailbox Storage Quota

If your mailbox is full, you won't be able to receive new messages — you may also see an error when trying to send mail.

1. Sign in to Hover's webmail portal (or mail.b.hostedemail.com for former VistaPrint accounts).
2. Scroll to the bottom of the mailbox to view the disk usage indicator. If it's red and shows 100% when you hover over it, your mailbox is full.
3. Delete emails to free up space, or increase your mailbox size if you're currently on a small mailbox plan.

Next steps

• Still not receiving email after trying all the steps above? Check hoverstatus.com for any active mail server outages.
• Missing email from one specific sender? Ask them whether they received a bounce-back message, and share it with Hover Support — the sending IP address may need to be removed from a blocklist.
• Contact Hover Support by phone at 1-866-731-6556 (or internationally, toll-free, at +800-371-69922), by live chat using the chat icon on the main Hover page, or by email at help@hover.com.

Questions? Contact Hover Support.