Set up FranklyMail in Apple Mail on a Mac
This is for adding a FranklyMail mailbox to Apple Mail on macOS. It assumes you already have a mailbox — an address and a password — and just need Mail to know where to find it.
Mail normally figures out a mail server on its own by looking up a special address for your domain, a step called autoconfiguration. FranklyMail doesn’t publish one of those yet, so that lookup fails every time, and Mail’s only way of reporting a failed lookup is to say it couldn’t verify your account name or password. It isn’t a login problem. The fix is to tell Mail the server address yourself, which takes about a minute once you know it’s coming.
Before you start.
Two things, and both come from the FranklyMail panel rather than from Apple Mail itself.
- The mailbox's address, for example you@yourdomain.com.
- The mailbox password — or an app password generated from Settings in the FranklyMail panel. Either works here. Your FranklyMail account sign-in password does not; it isn’t the same credential and Mail will reject it.
Step by step.
Written against Apple Mail's current screens — the label on the button is the label you'll actually see.
- 1
Open Mail, then Mail → Settings → Accounts. Click the + at the bottom of the account list on the left.
- 2
From the list of providers, choose "Other Mail Account…", then Continue.
- 3
Fill in your name, the mailbox address, and the mailbox password, then click Sign In.
A moment later, Mail will say it can’t verify the account name or password.
- 4
That message is expected, not a wrong password — it's what a failed autoconfiguration lookup looks like from here. Set Account Type to IMAP, and put mx1.franklymail.com in both the Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server fields, then click Sign In again.
Mail adds the account and returns you to the Accounts list.
- 5
Select the new account, open Server Settings, and turn off "Automatically manage connection settings" under both Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server — it starts on, and it hides the port fields until you turn it off.
- 6
Set the incoming port to 993 and the outgoing port to 465, with SSL/TLS switched on for both. Close the settings window — Mail saves as you go.
The settings, if Apple Mail asks for them directly.
Everything above written out as a table, in case the steps skip ahead of what your screen is showing.
mx1.franklymail.com- Incoming
- IMAP, port 993, SSL/TLS
- Outgoing
- SMTP, port 465, SSL/TLS
- Username
- The full mailbox address — not just the part before the @.
- Password
- The mailbox's own password, or an app password from Settings. Never the password you sign in to the FranklyMail panel with — that's a different credential and every client in this guide will reject it.
The same host also serves POP3 on port 995, which some older clients ask for instead. POP3 removes mail from the server as it downloads, so only the first device to check ever sees a message — IMAP is the right choice unless you have a specific reason to want that.
If it doesn't work.
- Step 4 still won’t verify, even after you set Account Type to IMAP and typed the host.
- Check the address is typed in full as the username — not just the part before the @ — and that the password is the mailbox password or an app password, not the FranklyMail sign-in password.
- Mail can receive but sending bounces back, or the reverse.
- Incoming and outgoing are two separate connections in Server Settings, each with its own port and its own "automatically manage" switch. It’s common to turn one off and miss the other — open Server Settings again and check both blocks.
- Nothing arrives at all, even though Mail says the account is set up.
- Confirm the domain shows fully verified in the FranklyMail panel first. A mail server with the wrong DNS records still lets you log in — it just never receives anything, because nothing is pointed at it yet.
- Still stuck.
- Send what Mail actually says — the exact error text — to hello@franklymail.com. "It doesn't work" takes longer to answer than the message Mail already gave you.
Other clients
No mailbox yet? Make one first, then come back for Apple Mail.
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