Question setup for using a mail. subdomain

[Wick]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.51

What's the preferred way in Plesk to handle email (IMAP/SMTP) via "mail.domain.com" rather than "domain.com"? Is that even recommended anymore?

In Plesk, do I add "mail.domain.com" as a subdomain? Or a domain alias? Or some other way?
I have an MX record for mail.example.com, & an A record for mail.example.com pointed to the server IP address.

Sorry in advance if this has been asked before. Looked through the forum & only found this post -- the last reply from @Peter Debik mentions the "mail." subdomain as a better setup to what that poster was asking. But can't figure out the correct way to set up a mail. subdomain in Plesk. Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[Peter Debik]

You do not add mail.domain.com as a subdomain or anywhere else. You can add it as an MX target and then route it to the mail server (which will normally be the same like your local IP). The post by me that you quote is giving advice on DNS configuration for an MX record. It is not related to addressing a server with that subdomain. It is only about the internal MX route.

It is not recommended to address the mail server with the mail subdomain. The normal and recommend way is to address it with the host name only. That is the same you are using to login to Plesk (but without the 8443 obviously).

 

[Wick]

"You can add [mail.example.com] as an MX target and then route it to the mail server" - how do you do that? So far I have the MX record as "mail.example.com" & then an A record for "mail.example.com" pointed at the server IP. Thanks!

 

[Kaspar]

"You can add [mail.example.com] as an MX target and then route it to the mail server" - how do you do that? So far I have the MX record as "mail.example.com" & then an A record for "mail.example.com" pointed at the server IP. Thanks!

That's all you needed

 

[Wick]

Thanks Peter & Kaspar. I think the issue now is how to assign an SSL cert to the "mail" subdomain. Is there a way I can assign a certificate issued specifically for mail.example.com or do I need to use a wildcard cert?

With the default Plesk setup, the cert for mail.example.com (so any secure connections based on the MX record) was the server default cert, which didn't match the MX record domain. As far as I can tell, the upshot of that setup was that incoming email from all external sources wasn't getting delivered to the email accounts, unless I opened up port 25.

I'm assuming the option to "enable SSL for mail" in Plesk just adds IMAP/POP3/SMTP ports & doesn't check the MX record for the domain to see if it's pointed to a subdomain like mail.example.com. (Thread about that here but seems like that's more of a feature request). So curious what's the best way to add SSL support for the MX record mail subdomain, if I'm not adding it in Plesk as a subdomain. Again, thanks in advance!

 

[Kaspar]

Your options for using a secured connecting for IMAP/POP3/SMTP are to use either the domain without any prefixes (so example.com) or you servers host name (which is the host name defined in Tool & settings > Server Settings). Using the mail prefix on a domain for secured connections isn't supported by Plesk currently.

 

[Wick]

Thanks Kaspar, that clears it up! In the meantime I found the same answer here, which links 3 duplicate feature requests for this -- also note the feature request comments asking to merge these various duplicate feature requests. Thanks again for the clarification on this! Very helpful.

 

[Peter Debik]

also note the feature request comments asking to merge these various duplicate feature requests

They have already been merged into the one that you see when you click the link.