Applies to: All plans (mailboxes included with your hosting). You can restore mail yourself in cPanel on every plan; on Managed plans our team can also do it for you.
Before you start: You need access to cPanel (open your service in the client area, then choose Log in to cPanel), the address of the mailbox, and roughly the date when the mail was still there.
Your mailboxes are included in the same automatic backups as your website, taken with JetBackup. You can put a mailbox back the way it was in a chosen backup directly from cPanel, for example to recover messages that were deleted by mistake.
Check Trash first
A deleted message usually goes to the mailbox's Trash folder first (Deleted Items in some apps), and a message you cannot find may be in Junk. Look there in webmail before you restore anything: if the message is there, just drag it back to your Inbox.
How far back you can restore
Backups run daily (weekly on Self-Managed Lite), and how long each one is kept depends on your plan: see Backup retention by plan. A message that arrived and was deleted between two backups is not in any backup, so it cannot be restored.
Restore a mailbox
- Log in to cPanel for your hosting account (client area -> Services -> My Services -> open the service -> Log in to cPanel).
- Open JetBackup (in the JetBackup section of the cPanel home screen; it may be shown as "JetBackup 5") and choose Email Backups.
- Pick a backup dated before the mail was deleted.
- Find the mailbox in that backup and choose Restore.
- Confirm. The restore is queued and runs in the background; a large mailbox takes longer.
Result: when the job finishes, the messages from that backup are back in the mailbox. Open it in webmail or your mail app to check.
If you are not sure which backup to use, or the mailbox is large and receives a lot of mail, ask us before you restore.
Ask us to do it (Managed)
On a Managed plan you do not have to do this yourself. Contact support with the mailbox address and the date or time you want to go back to, and we will run the restore for you.
A few things to know
- A full-account restore includes your mail. Restoring the whole account (see How to restore a full account or website) also puts every mailbox back to how it was in that backup, so mail that arrived after the backup can be lost. To bring back only your website, restore files and databases instead: see How to restore a file or folder and How to restore a database.
- Deleted a whole mailbox? Look for it in Email Backups in a backup taken before you deleted it, and restore it from there. If it is not listed or the restore does not bring it back, contact us with the address and the date.
- Keep your own copy of mail you must keep. Backups are only kept for your plan's retention period. For mail you need for longer, for example for your accounts, export it from your mail app to your own computer.
- Cancelling your hosting? Move or export your mail before the cancellation date. On that date the service is suspended, and 14 days later the account is deleted for good, with all its mail. Within those 14 days you can ask us to restore the service or to give you a copy.
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