How to Check and Increase Your Email Account's Storage Quota

If people are telling you your emails aren't arriving, or you're getting bounce-back messages saying a mailbox is full, the usual cause is a storage quota. Each email account on your hosting plan has a set amount of space for stored messages, and once it fills up, new mail gets rejected instead of delivered. Here's how to check how much space an account is using and increase its limit.

How to Check an Email Account's Storage Usage

In cPanel

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Under the Email section, click Email Accounts.
3. Find the account you want to check. The Usage column shows how much space it's using out of its assigned quota.

In DirectAdmin

1. Log in to your DirectAdmin account.
2. Click Email Accounts under the E-Mail Management section.
3. The list shows each account's current usage next to its quota limit.

How to Increase an Email Account's Quota

In cPanel

1. Go to Email Accounts under the Email section.
2. Find the account you want to change and click Manage next to it.
3. Under Mailbox Quota, choose a larger value, or select Unlimited if your hosting plan allows it.
4. Click Update Email Settings to apply the change.

In DirectAdmin

1. Go to Email Accounts under E-Mail Management.
2. Click Modify next to the account you want to change.
3. Enter a new value in the Quota field, in megabytes, or enter 0 for unlimited if your plan supports it.
4. Click Save to apply the change.

Raising one account's quota reduces the space left for the rest of your hosting account, since email storage counts against your overall disk allowance. If several accounts keep filling up, that's usually a sign you need a plan with more total storage rather than raising quotas one at a time.

Other Ways to Free Up Space Without Raising the Quota

• Delete old messages with large attachments, especially from folders like Sent and Trash, which count toward the quota just like the inbox does.
• Empty the Trash folder regularly. Deleted messages still take up space until it's emptied.
• If you use a desktop or mobile mail app, check whether it's set to leave a copy of messages on the server. Downloading and removing them frees up space on the account itself.
• Set up a habit of archiving old mail locally instead of leaving it on the server indefinitely.

If you're regularly running out of room across multiple accounts, it's worth reviewing your email hosting plan to see if a higher-capacity option fits your business better.