# Can new domains act as IMAP and SMTP hostnames?

**URL:** <https://discourse.mailinabox.email/t/can-new-domains-act-as-imap-and-smtp-hostnames/12823>\
**Category:** Help with Setup/Upgrade\
**Created:** [April 6, 2025, 4:34am UTC](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/t/can-new-domains-act-as-imap-and-smtp-hostnames/12823 "2025-04-06T04:34:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![umauma](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/779978/32.png) [@umauma](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/u/umauma)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2025, 4:34am UTC](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/t/can-new-domains-act-as-imap-and-smtp-hostnames/12823/1 "2025-04-06T04:34:43Z")

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Right now it seems like the primary domain is used for mail server hostname but can we use different domains as they are added?

For example,  
primary domain is box.domain.tld but then I added another user with different domain name like [other.com](http://other.com).

Now while setting up my IMAP and SMTP, I don’t want to use box.domain.tld but [other.com](http://other.com). I tried that but it’s not working.

Reason being is that my primary domain has been blocked by Spamhaus and will take sometime before I can unblock it. iCloud is rejecting my emails saying that my mail server domain is in spamhaus list.

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**Author:** ![miabuser](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/eb9ed0/32.png) [@miabuser](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/u/miabuser)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2025, 7:10am UTC](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/t/can-new-domains-act-as-imap-and-smtp-hostnames/12823/2 "2025-04-06T07:10:47Z")

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> [@umauma](#):
>
> Right now it seems like the primary domain is used for mail server hostname but can we use different domains as they are added?

Not really, and not with Mail-in-a-Box:

1. This would only work if your server had multiple IPs, since you can only have one PTR record per IP address. I mean, theoretically you could add multiple PTR records if your VPS provider allows it, which they most likely don’t, but that would cause even more problems since other servers would get inconsistent responses, meaning DNS would randomly return one FQDN or another.

2. Mail-in-a-Box does not support such a multi IP setup.

> [@umauma](#):
>
> Now while setting up my IMAP and SMTP, I don’t want to use box.domain.tld but [other.com](http://other.com). I tried that but it’s not working.

While it is theoretically possible to configure multiple domains for your _clients_ to connect to, it wouldn’t solve your problem because it wouldn’t change anything in terms of server-to-server communication. Other mail servers would still receive the messages from [box.domain.com](http://box.domain.com) because of what I explained above.

> [@umauma](#):
>
> Reason being is that my primary domain has been blocked by Spamhaus and will take sometime before I can unblock it. iCloud is rejecting my emails saying that my mail server domain is in spamhaus list.

Well, the easiest thing to do would be to wait until [domian.com](http://domian.com) is unblocked.

If you can’t wait, I see only two ways to get it working right now: Either reinstall Mail-in-a-Box and use [box.otherdomain.com](http://box.otherdomain.com) as the box’s FQDN, then add the blocked domain as a “secondary” email domain - or better yet, set up a separate Mail-in-a-Box server as [box.otherdomain.com](http://box.otherdomain.com), and when [domain.com](http://domain.com) is no longer blocked, move it to the new server.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![umauma](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/u/779978/32.png) [@umauma](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/u/umauma)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2025, 6:33pm UTC](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/t/can-new-domains-act-as-imap-and-smtp-hostnames/12823/3 "2025-04-06T18:33:39Z")

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> [@umauma](#):
>
> spamhaus

Thanks for your clear response. Ah the limitation of mail servers looking up PTR records!

For now I indeed have setup another mailinabox.

Just FYI, my domain is in spamhaus list because it has certain tld extension which is blocked right away and not because I am spamming people.

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**Author:** ![system](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/uploads/default/original/2X/4/4d0933d13c456b7e57f296aa6cc344525b6f0c70.png) [@system](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 6:33pm UTC](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/t/can-new-domains-act-as-imap-and-smtp-hostnames/12823/4 "2025-04-13T18:33:51Z")

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