Check and manage a mailbox's space

An account's quota limits the space available for its messages. To decide what to do when it is close to the limit, you need to tell apart mailbox usage, assigned quota and total hosting space.

Check the usage

In cPanel > Email Accounts, find the address and check its storage usage. From Manage you can view or adjust the available quota according to your plan. An unlimited quota is still subject to the hosting's capacity.

To see the breakdown by folder, open Email Disk Usage and select the account. The table shows folders, messages and space. You can also see the mailbox's own usage from the webmail tools.

Sort by size to find the folders that need attention. INBOX, Sent, Trash, Spam and custom folders use space for as long as they hold messages.

Decide how to recover room

• You still need the email: keep a separate, verified archive, or increase the quota if there is space available on the hosting.
• Some messages can go: review them in webmail and delete a specific selection.
• The whole hosting is full: also check files and other usage. Changing an individual email limit does not create extra capacity.

Moving messages to another folder in the same mailbox does not reduce its usage. Deleting over IMAP can carry the change over to your other devices; a synchronised copy is no substitute for a separate archive.

If you use Manage to clean up a folder

Confirm the address and folder before choosing the condition. Previously viewed includes messages marked as read, even important ones. All messages covers the whole folder, and Delete Permanently does not go through the Trash.

The tool does not guarantee a preview of the matches. To review the criteria, the advanced queries and the order in which to check things, follow how to free up space in an email account.

Then check what is left and let the quota update. If there were receiving failures, also check deferred or rejected messages.