Every email account on your SakuraHost hosting plan has a storage quota that determines how much email data it can hold. When a mailbox reaches its quota, new incoming emails will bounce back to the sender with an "over quota" error. Understanding and managing email quotas is essential for uninterrupted business communications.
What Are Email Quotas?
An email quota is a storage limit assigned to each individual email account. This limit encompasses all emails stored in the mailbox, including the inbox, sent items, drafts, trash, and any custom folders. The quota is measured in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB) and is separate from your overall hosting disk space, though both draw from the same total allocation.
Checking Your Email Storage Usage
Via cPanel
Step 2: Navigate to Email > Email Accounts.
Step 3: The list displays each email account with its current usage and quota. The Disk Used column shows actual usage, while Disk Quota shows the allocated limit.
Step 4: A visual progress bar indicates how close each account is to its quota. Yellow indicates approaching the limit, and red indicates the mailbox is full or nearly full.
Via Webmail
When logged into Roundcube webmail, your current storage usage is typically displayed in the bottom-left corner of the interface. This provides a quick at-a-glance view of your remaining space.
What Happens When a Mailbox Is Full?
When an email account reaches its storage quota:
- Incoming emails bounce: New messages are rejected with a "Mailbox quota exceeded" error and returned to the sender
- Sending may fail: Some configurations also prevent sending when the mailbox is full, as sent copies cannot be stored
- Auto-responders stop: Auto-responders may not function if the account cannot process incoming mail
- Missed opportunities: Potential customers, partners, or important communications may be lost
How to Free Up Email Storage
1. Delete Large Attachments
Emails with large attachments consume the most storage. In Roundcube webmail, you can sort emails by size to identify the largest messages:
2. Empty Trash and Junk Folders
Deleted emails often remain in the Trash folder, continuing to consume quota space. Similarly, the Junk/Spam folder can accumulate a significant amount of data.
3. Archive Old Emails Locally
If you use an email client like Outlook or Thunderbird, you can move old emails to local folders on your computer. This removes them from the server while keeping them accessible on your device.
4. Use IMAP Folder Management
With IMAP, deleting an email on one device removes it from the server and all other connected devices. Take advantage of this to maintain a clean mailbox:
- Regularly review and delete newsletters and promotional emails
- Remove duplicate emails
- Clean out old conversation threads that are no longer relevant
Increasing Email Quotas
Step 2: Click Manage next to the account you want to modify.
Step 3: Under Allocated Storage Space, enter the new quota value in MB. For example, enter 2048 for 2 GB or 5120 for 5 GB.
Step 4: Alternatively, select Unlimited to remove the quota restriction (limited only by your hosting plan's total disk space).
Step 5: Click Update Email Settings to apply the change.
Storage Planning Guidelines
Here are recommended quota sizes based on typical usage patterns:
- Light users (occasional email, mostly text): 500 MB - 1 GB
- Regular users (daily email, some attachments): 2 GB - 5 GB
- Heavy users (high volume, frequent attachments): 5 GB - 10 GB
- Shared/role addresses (info@, sales@): 5 GB+ or Unlimited
Monitoring and Alerts
To avoid quota-related issues, establish a routine:
- Check email account usage in cPanel at least once per month
- Set quotas slightly higher than expected usage to provide a buffer
- Monitor your overall hosting disk usage via cPanel's Disk Usage tool
- Consider setting up email forwarders to an external service for long-term archival