Shared VPS Dedicated WP Professional Plus
WP Enthusiast and WP Professional hosting accounts can use this tutorial if the Email Add On has been enabled.
If you're struggling with a slow email, check out some of the possible problems below and their solutions.
Your mailbox has too many messages in a folder
What is it?
On accounts created after June 1, 2011, if a folder has too many messages, it can begin to affect the performance.
Is it happening to me?
Check to see how many messages are in your mailbox folder. If you notice a folder with a high message count, this could be the cause.
Example: Your Inbox folder has 125,000 messages or your Sent folder has 200,000 messages.
How to fix
This can be fixed in a number of ways. If you are on a Shared Hosting account, the first option - and simplest - is to delete some of the messages in the folder. The other option is to contact our support team and see if they are eligible to move to a new, more efficient backend storage solution.
If you are on a VPS or Dedicated hosting package, you can consider the options above or opt to upgrade your storage disks to SSDs so that your server can handle the larger amount of mail in the folders.
Your mailbox is on an account created before June 1, 2011, and it has a very high storage amount in a folder
What is it?
On accounts created before June 1, 2011, mailbox folders are measured by data storage size. If folders have a very high storage amount in a single folder, it may slow down your mailbox.
Is it happening to me?
Check your mailbox folders and see how much storage they are taking up. If you find you have a very large one, this could be the cause of the slowness.
How to fix
For an account created before June 1, 2011, there are a couple of ways to fix this. The first is to delete some of the emails out of the folder in order to free up space.
Another solution is to change the backend mail storage engine you are using. Accounts created before June 1, 2011, use a different, less efficient backend mail storage engine called MBOX. MBOX’s inefficiency causes high storage folders to hinder the rest of the engine. To change this, contact our support team and ask for your mailbox storage engine to be converted to Maildir. This will help speed up the system. If you are interested in this option, contact our support team to see if your account qualifies for such a move.
If you want to drastically increase speed, you may want to consider migrating your entire account to one of our currently offered packages. Our current packages use a backend storage system that is even more efficient than Maildir. However, this backend storage option is not compatible with accounts created before June 1, 2011.
If you are interested in this option, contact our support team.
You’re sending out large emails
What is it?
Emails with lots of data will take longer to send than a regular email. Things like large attachments, images, gifs, and HTML can potentially slow down the sending process.
Is it happening to me?
Check your email’s size. Emails are usually a few MB, so if you see that the email is way over this amount, it could definitely be slowing down the sending process.
How to fix
Reduce the size of your email. This can be done by reducing any large attachment or images in your email. Text only takes up a few KB per sentence, so unless you’re sending an email with thousands of words, you can likely ignore your text. If your attachment can’t be reduced, you may want to consider storing it on a shareable platform, such as Google Docs or DropBox and sharing a link to it in the email.