Understanding Email Quotas and How to Increase Them

Every email account on your cPanel has a quota, which is the maximum amount of disk space the mailbox can use. When the quota is reached, new emails will bounce back to the sender. This guide explains how quotas work and how to increase them when needed.

What Is an Email Quota?

An email quota is a storage limit applied to each email address on your cPanel account. It determines how much data (emails, attachments) the mailbox can store before it is considered full.

• Quota of 250 MB: Suitable for light email use with minimal attachments.
• Quota of 1 GB: Good for regular business email with moderate attachments.
• Unlimited: No per-mailbox limit. The mailbox can grow until the entire cPanel account runs out of disk space.

Checking Your Current Quota

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Go to Email → Email Accounts.
3. Each email address displays a progress bar showing Storage Used out of Allocated Quota.

Changing an Email Quota

1. In Email Accounts, locate the email address you want to modify.
2. Click Manage.
3. Find the Storage or Quota field.
4. Enter the new quota in MB (e.g., 2048 for 2 GB), or select Unlimited if available.
5. Click Update Email Settings at the bottom of the page.

Per-Mailbox Quota vs Account Disk Quota

There are two levels of disk limits to be aware of:

• Per-mailbox quota: The limit for an individual email address. Set in Email Accounts → Manage.
• Account disk quota: The total disk space available for your entire cPanel account (website files, databases, email, logs). This is set by your hosting plan.

Even if you set a mailbox to Unlimited, it can only grow as large as the remaining space on your cPanel account. If your account runs out of total disk space, all mailboxes will stop receiving emails regardless of their individual quota settings.

Best Practices for Quota Management

• Set quotas that are appropriate for each user. Not every email address needs unlimited storage.
• Monitor disk usage regularly in Email Accounts or the Email Disk Usage tool.
• If a mailbox frequently reaches its quota, either increase the limit or clean up old emails.
• Use the Email Disk Usage tool to bulk-delete old or large messages.

Important Notes

• The "Unlimited" option may not be available on all hosting plans. If you do not see it, contact your hosting provider.
• Increasing a mailbox quota does not increase your total cPanel disk space. Make sure you have enough overall space before setting high quotas.
• When a mailbox is full, senders receive a bounce-back message stating the recipient mailbox is over quota.

Troubleshooting

"Unlimited" option is not available:

• Your hosting provider may have disabled this option. Contact support to request an increase.

Quota change is not taking effect:

• Allow a few minutes for the server to apply the new quota.
• If the issue persists, try suspending and unsuspending the email account.

Mailbox shows as full but the quota is set high:

• Your overall cPanel account may be out of disk space. Check your total disk usage in cPanel.
• Dovecot may need a quota recalculation. Contact your hosting provider if this persists.