Teletom Web Panel: Managing Your Mail Server (Part 1)

Understanding the core principles of managing domains, addresses, and aliases. We will cover content and backups in the next article.

Once a Teletom engineer has installed and configured the mail server at the system level, you can begin setting up your own email environment at the user level. You will receive access to the Teletom Web Panel. Below, we outline its core administrative functions.

General Workflow for Domains, Addresses, and Aliases

For example, suppose your main domain is test.com. During the initial server setup, a mail transport subdomain will be defined and configured, such as mail.test.com. From now on, mail for any of your domains will be processed through this dedicated transport.

Step-by-Step Domain Setup

  1. Add the domain to the system. In the panel, specify the domain for which you plan to issue email addresses (e.g., test.com).
  2. Get DNS records. The panel will automatically generate the required set of records for your domain registrar.
  3. Configure your registrar. Add these records to your domain's control panel to "tell" the internet that all mail for test.com is handled by mail.test.com.
  4. Wait for propagation. In 2–3 hours, once DNS records have propagated globally, you can start adding addresses and aliases.

Quick DNS Records Reference

The panel will generate ready-to-use values for you, but it's useful to understand what each record does:

MX

Specifies which server (transport) should receive mail for your domain.

SPF

A list of IP addresses authorized to send mail on behalf of your domain.

DKIM

A public key for verifying digital signatures. Guarantees the email wasn't altered in transit.

DMARC

A policy telling mail services what to do with emails that fail SPF and DKIM checks.

⚠️ Important! Technically, you can add absolutely any domain to the system (even google.com) and freely create addresses on it for internal correspondence. However, it is critically important to restrict these addresses from sending mail to the outside world. Otherwise, the global internet community will quickly flag your transport as fraudulent (spoofing), leading to blacklisting and sending blocks.

Mailboxes vs. Aliases: What's the Difference?

To build an efficient email architecture, you need to clearly understand the difference between a physical mailbox and a virtual address.

πŸ“§ Physical Address (Mailbox)

Equivalent to a full user account. The user logs into the mail client (Roundcube) using this login and password. The mailbox has its own dedicated disk space.

πŸ”„ Forwarding (Alias)

A virtual address. It has no password or storage of its own. All incoming and outgoing mail for this address is actually handled by the real (physical) user's mailbox.

Practical Example

Suppose you have a main physical user: info@test.com.
You want this same employee to manage the addresses support@test.com and sale@test.com.

You do not need to create three separate mailboxes and force the employee to constantly log out and log back in under different names. You simply add two aliases pointing to info@test.com.

Result: The user info@test.com logs in just once. In the mail client settings, they can choose which address to send from (info, support, or sale) and see all correspondence arriving at these addresses in a single, unified interface. Aliases allow for flexible, elegant collaboration models.

The Concept of "Trusted Hosts"

When you send mail from your domains, every email is automatically signed by your legitimate mail transport using DKIM encryption. The transport needs to "know" which emails it is allowed to sign.

By default, all emails sent directly through your server are signed automatically. But imagine this scenario: you have a website on third-party hosting, and you want that website to send notifications (e.g., receipts or contact forms) via your main mail transport mail.test.com.

In this case, you must inform your mail system about a trusted external host. You add the domain name or IP address of that host to a special section in the panel. Now, when mail arrives from that IP, the transport recognizes it as "its own", processes it correctly, and applies a valid DKIM signature to the email. If you don't do this, the emails will go out unsigned and are highly likely to land in spam.

Additional Mailbox Settings

After creating a mailbox, the administrator can "dig deeper" and finely tune its behavior for specific business tasks:

πŸ”’
Block External Correspondence You can completely block a user from sending and receiving mail from the outside world. Ideal for system or internal technical addresses.
πŸ””
Instant Notifications For each user, you can configure alerts for new mail via Telegram or the ntfy service. Invaluable when an urgent reaction to incoming mail is required.
πŸ“
Quotas and Limits Individually set the maximum allowed size for a mailbox to control disk space usage on the server.

What's in the Next Part?

In the next article, we will explore working with uploaded content: how to manage files in your private cloud via the web panel, and how to build a reliable, convenient data backup system.

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