Reading time: 12 min · Last verified: August 2026 · SMTPedia editorial team
There is no such thing as a HostGator mail server. There is your HostGator mail server, and its name is a number: something like gator1234.hostgator.com. That single fact is what makes this provider harder to configure than a cable company or a mailbox vendor, and it is the fact that every AI summary of the settings quietly drops. Ask Google for HostGator email settings today and the answer prints a tidy pair of tables that put port 587 in the secure block. HostGator’s own documentation puts 587 in third place on the unencrypted list, behind 25 and 26, as the port you try when your internet provider has blocked the first two.
On a standard HostGator hosting plan, use your server hostname for both incoming and outgoing, with 993 for IMAP, 995 for POP3 and 465 for SMTP, all on SSL, and outgoing authentication switched on. The server hostname is not mail.yourdomain.com and it is not smtp.hostgator.com, which does not exist at all. It is the gatorNNNN.hostgator.com or nsNNNN.hostgator.com name shown in your welcome email and in cPanel. Ports 25, 26 and 587 appear in HostGator’s documentation only in the unencrypted block, and 587 appears there last.
HostGator Sells Two Different Mailboxes
Before any port matters, work out which of the two products you actually have. They run on entirely separate infrastructure, they have nothing in common at the hostname level, and the settings for one will never work for the other.
| Product | How you got it | Incoming host | Outgoing host |
|---|---|---|---|
| cPanel Email | Included with a shared, reseller, VPS or dedicated hosting plan | Your server name, e.g. gator1234.hostgator.com | The same server name |
| Professional Email | A separate paid subscription, bought on its own or bundled | imap.titan.email or pop.titan.email | smtp.titan.email |
| The quickest test: log into your HostGator control panel. If you create and manage mailboxes inside cPanel, under Email Accounts, you have cPanel Email. If mailboxes are managed in a separate Professional Email dashboard, you have the Titan product and the whole second half of this page applies instead of the first. | |||
This split is not unique to HostGator, and it is the single most common reason a set of copied settings fails. Bluehost divides its mail the same way, a cPanel mailbox included and a Titan mailbox sold separately, and what each tier of mailbox actually permits is compared in the reference on business email hosting plans and their real limits.
The cPanel Settings HostGator Publishes
Every value below comes from HostGator’s own Email Connection Settings article and its client settings article, the two pages the provider maintains as its configuration reference. Nothing here is reconstructed from a client vendor’s wizard or a forum thread.
| Setting | With SSL (recommended) | No SSL |
|---|---|---|
| Username | Your complete email address, not the part before the at sign | |
| Incoming host | Your server name, e.g. gator1234.hostgator.com | mail.yourdomain.com |
| IMAP port | 993 | 143 |
| POP3 port | 995 | 110 |
| Outgoing host | The same server name | mail.yourdomain.com |
| SMTP port | 465 | 25, then 26, then 587 |
| Outgoing authentication | Required. HostGator states plainly that the outgoing mail server does require authentication | |
| Read the two columns as two complete configurations, not as a menu. The hostname changes between them, which is the part almost every third party guide gets wrong. Mixing the SSL port with the plaintext hostname is the single most common HostGator setup failure, and the section on certificates below explains exactly why it breaks. | ||
If either protocol is unfamiliar territory, the practical difference between leaving mail on the server and pulling it down is covered in the guides to setting up IMAP the way it was designed to work and what POP3 does to a mailbox you also read on your phone. The port numbers themselves, and why each one exists, are laid out in the reference on email protocols and the ports assigned to them.
Port 587 Is the Third Plaintext Fallback
This is the section worth reading even if you already have mail working, because it is where the summaries and the source documentation part company.
Across most of the industry, port 587 with STARTTLS is the modern submission port and 465 is the one people describe as deprecated. That reputation is real, and it is why so many setup guides reach for 587 out of habit. HostGator does not follow it. In HostGator’s client settings article the outgoing instruction reads, verbatim: “Outgoing Port: 25 (If 25 does not work, try 26 as many ISPs block port 25. If neither 25 nor 26 work, try 587.)”. That sentence sits in the standard, unencrypted block. The secure block next to it lists exactly one outgoing port: “Outgoing Port: 465.”
HostGator’s Email Connection Settings page is narrower still. Its SSL rows carry 465 and nothing else, its non-SSL rows carry 25 or 26, and the number 587 does not appear on that page at all.
The only outgoing port HostGator pairs with encryption. Implicit TLS from the first byte, nothing to negotiate. Set the encryption field to SSL or SSL/TLS, and pair it with the server hostname rather than mail.yourdomain.com.
Third on HostGator’s own fallback list, reached only after 25 and 26 have both failed. It is a plaintext row on this provider. Use it to prove the account works, then move back to 465.
This combination appears in no HostGator document. It is produced by reading the secure column and the port list as two independent menus. A client set this way will usually hang at the handshake rather than return a clean error.
The Google AI Overview served on this query at the end of August 2026 does exactly that. Under a heading reading “SSL Settings (Secure – Recommended)” it prints “Outgoing SMTP Port: 465 or 587”. The two sources it cites are HostGator’s own pages, and neither of them puts 587 in a secure block: the number has migrated across the table boundary during summarisation. That is a composition error rather than a factual one, which is what makes it hard to catch. The same summary also merges the two products, offering gator1234.hostgator.com and imap.titan.email in one breath as though a reader could pick either.
This is the second hosting brand in a row where 587 turns out to belong to one row only. IONOS contradicts itself between two of its own pages on the outgoing port, and Optimum recommends 465 and labels 587 a legacy port outright. The general rule that 587 is always the modern choice is not general enough to configure a client with.
Port 26 Is Not a Typo
Port 26 is unusual enough that people assume it is a documentation typo. It is not. It is a cPanel convention that HostGator supports deliberately, for one reason: consumer internet providers block outbound port 25 to stop infected machines sending spam directly, and 26 is an unregistered port those filters historically ignored.
HostGator spells out the case where even that is not enough. Its client settings article notes that “Comcast/Xfinity Internet customers use port 587 as ports 25 and 26 are both blocked on their network.” That is the entire reason 587 is on the list: not because it is more secure, but because it is the last unblocked door on one large American network. If you are reading this on a Comcast connection, the settings for the Comcast and Xfinity mailbox itself are documented separately, and they are a different set of values again.
None of this applies once you use 465, which consumer networks do not filter the way they filter 25. That is a practical argument for the encrypted configuration on top of the obvious one, and the wider question of which ports survive which networks is covered in the guide to configuring an SMTP connection end to end.
Turning On SSL Changes the Hostname, Not Just the Port
Here is the failure this page exists to prevent. Mail works on mail.theirdomain.com with port 143. Someone decides to secure it, changes 143 to 993, ticks SSL, and it stops working. The port was right. The hostname was not.
HostGator states the requirement directly in its article on POP3 and IMAP with SSL: “you must replace your normal mail.domain.com URL with the hostname of the server. The hostname should be used for the incoming/outgoing certificate domain.” The reason is the certificate. HostGator’s mail servers present a certificate issued for the server’s own name. Your domain’s mail. record points at that machine, but the machine has never been issued a certificate for your domain, so the moment the client demands a verified TLS session the name on the certificate and the name in the settings do not match.
A certificate mismatch almost never says “certificate”. Mail clients report it as a server that cannot be reached, a connection that timed out, or, worst of all, a password prompt that reappears every time you dismiss it. People respond by resetting the mailbox password, which changes nothing, because the session never got far enough to send a password.
Before you reset anything, put the server name in both host fields. If mail starts flowing, the password was never the problem.
The general mechanics of certificate validation on mail connections, including why some clients silently accept a mismatch and others refuse, are covered in the reference on SSL and TLS for email, certificates and MTA-STS. If your client reports an explicit upgrade failure instead, the entry on the 550 Must issue a STARTTLS command first response covers what the server is asking for.
Where to Find Your Server Name, and What It Really Is
Three places carry it: your hosting welcome email, under server details; the statistics panel inside cPanel, labelled Server Name; and the Connect Devices link beside each mailbox under Email Accounts, which prints the exact values for that account. The name takes one of two shapes. gatorNNNN.hostgator.com is the older shared hosting family; nsNNNN.hostgator.com is the other, and it is the one HostGator prints in its own unencrypted examples. Both are current, and which one you have depends on when your account was provisioned.
These names are per machine, and that is worth demonstrating rather than asserting. Resolved on 28 August 2026, gator1234.hostgator.com, the very example HostGator prints in its documentation, answers with a live address, and answered with the same one on eight consecutive lookups. gator3000, gator4444 and gator5000 each answer on a different network block, while gator2000 and gator0000 return nothing, and neither does an invented name like zzzfake998.hostgator.com. That last result is the one that matters: there is no wildcard record, so a name that answers is a machine that exists.
| Hostname | Resolves | What that tells you |
|---|---|---|
gator1234.hostgator.com | Yes, stable across repeated lookups | HostGator’s documentation example is a live server, not a placeholder |
gator3000, gator4444, gator5000 | Yes, each to a different address | One name per machine, allocated in blocks |
gator2000, gator0000 | No | The numbering has gaps; the pattern is not a formula |
zzzfake998.hostgator.com | No | Negative control: no wildcard record exists |
smtp.hostgator.com, imap.hostgator.com | No | The brand level hostnames people guess do not exist |
mail.hostgator.com | Yes | Answers, but is not asked for in any HostGator setup article |
Two things follow. smtp.hostgator.com is not a fallback you can try when the server name is mislaid: it does not resolve, so the client reports a lookup failure and you have learned nothing. And mail.hostgator.com does answer, which is a trap rather than a gift. A hostname resolving is not the same as a provider supporting it, and HostGator asks for it in none of its setup articles.
Because the documented example is a live machine, one mistake produces a genuinely confusing outcome. Type gator1234.hostgator.com into a client while your account lives on another server and you are not talking to a dead name: you are talking to a real HostGator machine that has never heard of your mailbox, and it answers with an authentication failure. The credentials look wrong. They are not. The address is. If it is the outgoing side that fails, the entry on the 454 4.7.1 Relay access denied response describes what a server says when it declines to relay for someone it does not recognise.
Professional Email Runs on Titan, With Its Own Servers
If your mailboxes are managed outside cPanel, none of the above applies. HostGator Professional Email is a Titan mailbox sold under the HostGator name, and Titan publishes fixed hostnames that are the same for every customer.
| Protocol | Server | Port | Encryption |
|---|---|---|---|
| IMAP (incoming) | imap.titan.email | 993 | SSL/TLS |
| POP (incoming) | pop.titan.email | 995 | SSL/TLS |
| SMTP (outgoing) | smtp.titan.email | 465 | SSL/TLS |
| No alternate port is published here at all. HostGator’s Professional Email configuration article lists one port per protocol and one encryption method per port. There is no plaintext row, no 143, no 110 and no 25. The username is your full email address and the password is the mailbox password, not your HostGator account password. | |||
Note what is absent: on this product, 587 does not appear either, and the absence means something different from the cPanel case. There is no unencrypted fallback to fall back to. If 465 is blocked on your network, the answer is to unblock it or use webmail, not to find another port.
Titan is resold by several hosting brands under several names, which is why these three hostnames turn up in guides that never mention Titan. The platform level detail, including the regional hosts some accounts use instead, is in the guide to Titan mail server settings and its regional host variants. Two other resellers are covered in the Namecheap Private Email settings guide.
The Sending Limits HostGator Publishes
HostGator is more forthcoming here than most hosts, and the numbers are specific enough to plan around. All of these come from its Mail Policy and Limits article.
| Limit | Value | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Outgoing messages | 500 per hour, per domain | Shared and reseller plans |
| Daily ceiling | Explicitly not 12,000 per day | Shared and reseller: the hourly cap does not multiply out across 24 hours |
| POP checks | 30 per hour, per connecting IP address | All accounts polling by POP3 |
| Mailing lists over 900 addresses | Off peak hours only | Shared and reseller plans |
| Mailing lists over 5,000 addresses | Not permitted; requires VPS or dedicated | Shared and reseller plans |
| VPS and dedicated | No published hourly cap | HostGator states these plans are not subject to the same mail restrictions |
The daily figure is the genuine gotcha: HostGator says in as many words that you cannot send 12,000 emails a day on a shared or reseller plan, which is exactly what 500 an hour times 24 would suggest. The hourly number is a ceiling on bursts, not a budget to spend around the clock.
The POP check limit is rarer still, and almost nobody plans for it. Thirty connections per hour per IP is generous for one person and tight for an office where six people behind one router each poll every five minutes: twelve checks an hour each, times six, is seventy two, and everything past thirty is refused. The symptom is intermittent, which is what makes it hard to diagnose. The entry on the 421 4.7.0 Too many connections response describes the shape of the failure, and moving those clients to IMAP, which holds one connection open instead of reconnecting, removes it rather than working around it.
What HostGator Does Not Publish
Four values readers look for are genuinely absent from HostGator’s documentation, and they are recorded as absent rather than filled in from a comparison site.
- No attachment size ceiling. No figure appears in the mail policy; the binding constraint is what the receiving server accepts, and those ranges are collected in the reference on attachment size limits across major providers.
- No recipients per message figure. The mailing list thresholds above are the closest thing HostGator states.
- No fixed mailbox quota. It is set per account in cPanel rather than by policy, so there is no single number to quote.
- No application specific passwords for cPanel mail. The mailbox password is the credential, unlike Google Workspace, where an app password is required for most third party clients.
Setting It Up in a Client
The values are the same everywhere; only the menus differ. Two fields are worth watching on every platform: the hostname on both sides, and the outgoing authentication box.
- Outlook. Choose manual setup and IMAP rather than letting autodiscover run, because it will propose values that do not match. Then open More Settings and tick the outgoing authentication box on the Outgoing Server tab: it is off by default and it is the most common thing left undone. Current Outlook builds are listed here.
- Apple Mail, iPhone and iPad. Add the account as Other. iOS marks the outgoing username and password as optional; fill them in anyway, or you will save an account that receives but never sends. Apple Mail version details are documented here.
- Android and the Gmail app. Use Manual setup and pick Personal (IMAP), not Exchange, and set security to SSL/TLS rather than the default STARTTLS.
When It Does Not Work
HostGator failures cluster into four shapes, each with a different fix. Work down them in order: the cheapest checks are also the most likely to be the answer.
Almost always the hostname, not the password. You are on an SSL port with the mail.yourdomain.com name. Swap in the server name before touching the password.
Outgoing authentication is off, or the outgoing port is blocked by your network. Tick the box first, then try 465 before reaching for 25, 26 or 587.
The 500 per hour per domain cap. It resets on a rolling basis rather than on the clock hour, so the queue will drain on its own.
A shared IP reputation problem rather than a settings problem. Read the bounce text: it names the list that refused you.
That fourth case has a HostGator specific form. HostGator and the wider group of brands it belongs to run their own reputation list on rbl.websitewelcome.com, and mail can be refused by it in either direction. The rejection text is distinctive and the remedy is not the usual one, which is why it has its own entry covering the 550 JunkMail rejected response from rbl.websitewelcome.com. For anything else the server says back, the list of SMTP response codes and what each one means is the place to start.
One check belongs earlier than most people run it: confirm your domain’s mail is actually pointed at HostGator. If the mailbox moved to a third party at some point and the hosting stayed put, the client settings can be perfect and the mail will still land somewhere else. Reading your MX records tells you which server is receiving in under a minute, and if mail arrives but not where you expect, a forwarding rule set up years ago and forgotten is the usual culprit.
Whatever the symptom, publishing an SPF record that authorises HostGator to send for your domain is the one piece of DNS work worth doing on day one.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the SMTP settings for HostGator email?
On a cPanel hosting plan, the outgoing server is your own server name, in the form gator1234.hostgator.com or nsNNNN.hostgator.com, on port 465 with SSL, with outgoing authentication enabled and your full email address as the username. The unencrypted alternative is mail.yourdomain.com on port 25, then 26, then 587. On Professional Email the outgoing server is smtp.titan.email on port 465 with SSL/TLS, and no other port is published.
What is my HostGator server name?
It is in your hosting welcome email under server details, in the statistics panel inside cPanel, and on the Connect Devices screen for each mailbox under Email Accounts. It will look like gator1234.hostgator.com or ns1234.hostgator.com. It is specific to the machine your account sits on, so no other customer’s server name will work for you, and there is no generic smtp.hostgator.com to fall back on.
Does HostGator support port 587?
Yes, but only as the third option on its unencrypted list, after 25 and 26. HostGator’s instruction reads that if neither 25 nor 26 work, try 587, and it names Comcast and Xfinity customers as the case where both earlier ports are blocked. HostGator never pairs 587 with SSL or STARTTLS in its documentation. The encrypted outgoing port is 465, and it is the only one.
How do I configure HostGator email in Outlook?
Choose manual setup and IMAP rather than letting autodiscover run, because it will propose values that do not match. Enter your server name in both the incoming and outgoing host fields, use 993 incoming and 465 outgoing with SSL/TLS on both, and use your complete email address as the username. Then open More Settings, go to the Outgoing Server tab, and tick the box that says the outgoing server requires authentication. That box is off by default and an account without it will receive mail but never send any.
Why is my HostGator IMAP not working after enabling SSL?
Because the hostname has to change along with the port. HostGator says you must replace mail.yourdomain.com with the server hostname when using SSL, since the certificate is issued for the server’s name and not for your domain. Changing 143 to 993 while leaving mail.yourdomain.com in place produces a certificate mismatch, which most clients report as a timeout or a repeating password prompt rather than as a certificate problem.
Settings for the other hosting and domain providers documented on this site:
Bluehost Email Settings · GoDaddy Email Settings · IONOS Email Settings · Namecheap Private Email Settings · Rackspace Email Settings · Titan Email Settings · Microsoft 365 Email Settings
About This Guide
These values were verified on August 28, 2026 against HostGator’s own support documentation: its Email Connection Settings article for the SSL and non-SSL cPanel tables, its client settings article for the outgoing port fallback order and the Comcast note, its POP3 or IMAP with SSL article for the requirement to use the server hostname as the certificate domain, its Professional Email configuration article for the Titan hostnames and ports, and its Mail Policy and Limits article for every sending figure quoted here. Hostnames were resolved independently on the same date, with repeated lookups on each name and with invented names used as negative controls to confirm that no wildcard record is in play on hostgator.com. Mail ports were not probed: outbound connections on 465, 993 and 995 are blocked from the network used for verification, so no handshake result is claimed on this page. Fields HostGator does not publish, including any attachment ceiling, per message recipient count, fixed mailbox quota or application specific password, are recorded as absent rather than filled in from third party comparison pages. The AI Overview wording quoted here was captured from a live United States desktop result on the same date. SMTPedia re-verifies provider settings quarterly. If HostGator publishes a value that contradicts this page, the provider is right and we want to hear about it.
About the Author
Alaa · LinkedIn
Email infrastructure specialist with 8+ years of hands-on experience in SMTP, deliverability, and email verification. I’ve configured and troubleshot mail systems across Postfix, Exchange, and cloud relays, managed IP reputation and warmup campaigns, and built verification pipelines processing millions of addresses. My work spans DNS authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI), bounce handling, blocklist monitoring, and compliance frameworks including CAN-SPAM and GDPR. I write every article on SMTPedia to give email professionals, developers, and marketers the accurate, RFC-grounded reference they need.
About SMTPedia
SMTPedia is an independent email industry reference covering SMTP, IMAP, POP3, email deliverability, marketing platforms, DNS authentication, and email verification. Every article is researched from official provider documentation, IETF RFCs, and industry best practices. Settings and configurations are verified quarterly.
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