Mailcow on Broadbent Host
Mailcow is the mail platform Broadbent Host runs for customer domains. The webmail address is https://webmail.broadbent.host. The platform domains are mail.broadbent.host and mail.broadbent.email. A customer domain on that platform has its own quota, a default mailbox size, a maximum quota and a limit on how many mailboxes it may hold. Each mailbox has an address, a quota and an active flag. Aliases are separate objects. Quarantine notification can be turned on or off per mailbox. That is the system the mail API keeps in step with Mailcow.
The plans you buy are still the email hosting plans, and those plans are described as Plesk. Plesk is the control panel and the name on the plan: Plesk webmail access, the setup instructions, the toolkit on shared hosting. Mailcow is where the mailbox, the alias and the domain quota live. You do not order a second, rival mail product called Mailcow. If you came here looking for Mailcow hosting, this is the mail system, and the way onto it is the email plan or a hosting account that includes mail.
This article stays inside those facts. It does not invent a mailbox price, a spam-filter brand, or a guaranteed delivery time. Prices are the ones shown when you configure the plan. Delivery still depends on the other side accepting the message.
What is stored for a domain
When a domain is on the platform it is recorded with a quota for the domain, a default quota for a new mailbox, a maximum quota, and a mailbox limit. Those numbers are how a plan becomes a limit inside Mailcow. Basic email hosting is 5 GB and 10 mailboxes. Business is 20 GB and 25 mailboxes. Enterprise is 50 GB with unlimited mailboxes on the plan text. The platform fields are the place those plan limits are enforced. If you add storage, the quota has to move with it. A mailbox cannot grow past the domain just because the mail client kept the message.
A mailbox can be active or inactive. Inactive is how a leaver is stopped without deleting the history on the same day. An alias points another address at a mailbox or at a set of them. An alias is not a second full mailbox and it should not be counted as one when you are checking the mailbox limit. People often make a shared mailbox when they wanted an alias, or an alias when they wanted a private mailbox with its own password. The difference is whether someone logs in as that address.
Quarantine notification is a setting on the mailbox. It tells the mailbox owner that mail was held. It is not a promise that every piece of spam is held, and it is not a second inbox you can ignore for a month. Someone still has to look. The email plans also include spam and virus protection at the level the plan names: standard on the Basic plan. That filtering is part of the email product. The quarantine flag is part of how Mailcow tells the user.
Webmail and mail clients
Webmail is https://webmail.broadbent.host. Use it when you need the mailbox in a browser, on a machine that should not have the account saved, or while a desktop client is being set up. The email plans also name Plesk webmail and the browser clients Roundcube, Horde, Plesk Webmail, SquirrelMail and Afterlogic WebMail Pro. Those are the clients listed for the Plesk email product. Day to day, the address to remember for Broadbent webmail is webmail.broadbent.host.
IMAP and POP3 are supported on the email plans, with SMTP for sending, and the message you receive after purchase carries the server names. Auto-configuration in the panel covers the common desktop and phone clients. A phone and Outlook are normal. Prefer IMAP if more than one device should see the same mail. POP3 that removes mail from the server will empty the phone and the webmail view, because the messages now live only on the laptop that downloaded them. That is the client, not a fault in Mailcow.
Passwords are per mailbox. An alias does not have its own password. If three people need to send as one address, decide whether they share one mailbox, which means one password, or whether each has a mailbox and the shared address is an alias or a send-as right. Sharing one password is the arrangement that breaks when someone leaves.
How a domain gets onto the platform
A domain is matched to a registration we already know, or it is assigned. Platform domains themselves, mail.broadbent.host and mail.broadbent.email, are the service names. They are not customer domains and they are not where you create staff mail. Your domain is the one on the order: the name you registered with us, transferred, or already use for the website.
DNS still has to point mail at the platform. The panel and the UK hosting team are how those records are set when we hold the DNS. If the DNS is elsewhere, the records have to be added there or webmail will sign in while the rest of the world still delivers to the old host. A half-moved domain is the usual cause of a missing message in the first week. Agree which host receives mail before you change the records, and leave the old host accepting mail until the new one is seen to receive it.
The email FAQ says existing addresses can be migrated, including mail, contacts and calendar data, with migration assistance. Mailcow will hold the new mailbox. It will not reach into the old provider by itself. The move is a piece of work, planned so the gap is short. It is not automatic because the domain is now listed.
Quotas, notices, and a full mailbox
Approaching the storage limit raises a notice. The remedies on the email FAQ are to upgrade the plan, add storage, or archive and delete mail. A full mailbox refuses new mail. Senders may retry for a while and then give up. That looks, from the outside, like mail is broken. From the platform it is a quota. Check the mailbox size in webmail or in the panel before you change DNS or open a fault.
Domain quota and mailbox quota are both real. Ten mailboxes on a 5 GB Basic domain cannot each hold 5 GB. The domain is the pool. Enterprise raises the pool to 50 GB and removes the mailbox-count cap on the plan. It does not make the disk infinite. A mailbox that keeps every newsletter from 2014 will fill any pool. Archiving is the ordinary answer. Extra storage is the add-on when the working set really is that large.
Inactive mailboxes still occupy quota if the messages are still there. Switching a leaver to inactive stops sign-in. It does not shrink the domain. Delete or export when the retention you need is satisfied. The email product does not publish a separate legal retention period on the plan page. Keep what you are required to keep, and do not confuse a technical quota with a records policy.
What Mailcow is not
Mailcow is not Microsoft 365 and it is not Google Workspace. Those are managed under IT and server management when you want us to run the users, the licences and the policies. A Broadbent mailbox is the right tool for a domain address on our platform. A Microsoft 365 mailbox is the right tool when the organisation already lives in Exchange, Teams and SharePoint. Mixing them on one domain needs a clear split of which address lives where. The mail platform will not silently become Exchange because a user prefers Outlook. Outlook can talk to this mail over IMAP or POP3. That is a client connection, not a hosted Exchange tenancy.
Mailcow is not the website. The site can be on Plesk shared hosting, on a server, or somewhere else. Mail for the same domain can be here. The panel is still how many customers add the mailbox. The platform is still Mailcow.
Mailcow is not a filtering appliance you configure with your own ruleset on a Cisco firewall. Spam and virus protection on the email plan is the protection described there. A hardware firewall is a different product, for a rack, not for a mailbox rule. Quarantine notification is the mailbox setting. It is not a firewall policy.
It is also not a backup of the whole company. The email FAQ says mail is stored on UK servers with regular backups. That is the hosting backup. It is not a substitute for an export you keep because a person deleted the wrong folder. If a mailbox is removed, treat it as removed. Ask what can be restored before you assume the backup covers that folder for as long as you might need.
Running it through a normal month
A starter joins. You create a mailbox inside the domain quota, set a password, and send the server settings or rely on auto-configuration. They open webmail.broadbent.host once to prove the password, then add the account to the phone over IMAP. A leaver is set inactive the same day, and the mailbox is exported or removed when you know you may. A shared address such as accounts@ is an alias onto the people who actually read it, unless those people must share a single login, in which case it is one mailbox and the password changes when the group changes.
Once a month, look at the domain quota. The notice should not be the first time you hear about it. Look at quarantine with the same regularity you look at the junk folder. A false positive that sits for a fortnight is a message you did not answer. The platform can notify. It cannot decide the message was wanted.
If mail to one address fails and mail to another on the same domain works, the fault is that mailbox: quota, inactive flag, or a client that has stopped. If every address on the domain fails at once, look at DNS and at whether the domain is active on the platform. If the website loads and the mail does not, the site and the mail are simply pointed at different places, which is allowed and easy to forget after a redesign.
Where to go next
Plesk hosting is the panel article. Plesk or Mailcow is the decision guide for which name belongs to which job. Mailcow email hosting is the landing page for the same platform. Order the email plan that matches the mailbox count and the storage: Basic, Business or Enterprise. Use webmail.broadbent.host for the mailbox in a browser. Leave Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace on the IT management plan when that is the suite the office actually uses.
The useful test after any change is small. Send from outside the domain to the new mailbox, reply from the mailbox, and confirm the message is visible in webmail and on the phone. If those three agree, the mailbox is on the platform and the client is telling the truth. If they do not, fix that before you add the next ten users.
Support, and what to have ready
The email product includes support, and the plan page describes 24/7 UK support. When you write in, name the domain, the mailbox address, and whether webmail.broadbent.host accepts the password. Say whether the failure is one mailbox or every mailbox on the domain. Say whether DNS for the domain is on our nameservers or elsewhere. Those four facts separate a quota, a client, a domain that is inactive, and a record that still points at the previous host.
A password reset is a mailbox change. An alias change is not a password change. A quarantine notification that nobody received is the notification setting plus the spam the plan already filters. A message that left webmail and never arrived is a delivery question, and the receiving server's response is the useful evidence. A message that never appeared in webmail was not accepted onto the platform, which points back at DNS, the domain active flag, or the quota.
Keep the mailbox list where the people who join and leave can be matched to it. Mailcow will not know that a contractor finished on Friday. Inactive is a switch you set. The platform will keep accepting mail for an active address, and it will keep that mail inside the domain quota, until you say otherwise.