Q. How can I prevent my mailbox from getting full?

A. In order to prevent your mailbox from getting full, we recommend that you do the following;

1. Setup your account in POP mode on your computer and any other devices you may be using to check your email.

Using the account in POP mode means only received messages take up storage space on the server. For more information about the difference between POP and IMAP type accounts, please see our FAQ page here.


2. Setup your POP account to regularly remove received email from the server.

Any POP account that you setup can be configured to store email on our server for a certain period of time. If you are only using the account on one computer or other device, you can setup the account to remove email from the server immediately after downloading it.

If you are using the email account on multiple computers and/or other devices, you can setup the POP accounts to keep email on the server for a certain period of time before it is removed which should* allow each device to receive all of the email. In this case, we would recommend setting up the account to remove email from the server after 1 week, maximum.

*If you are using multiple devices and the accounts on each device are setup to remove email from the server after one week, you will need to make sure each device connects to the server at least once every week to guarantee that each device receives all of the email.


3. Apply for the Mail Plus service.

The default size of the mailbox for @gol.com accounts is currently 100MB but this can be increased** by applying for the Mail Plus service. It is possible to increase the size of the mailbox from 100MB all the way up to 3GB via the Members Station and using this service will allow you to either store email on the server for a longer period of time (POP) or to synchronize the Inbox, Sent and Trash folders for one account on multiple devices (IMAP).

**If your mailbox is full at the time you apply for the Mail Plus service, the change in size will not go through until the mailbox is cleared of enough email to below the current maximum. For example, if your mailbox is 100MB in size and you have 102MB of email stored on the server, the change will not go through until the amount of email being stored on the server totals less than 100MB. For more information on checking how much email storage space you are using, please see our FAQ page here.


4. Setup mail forwarding. If you are currently using another email account that has more storage space available, it is possible to setup mail forwarding so that any email sent to your @gol.com account is automatically forwarded to another email account of your choosing. This can be setup via the Members Station and in the Mail Forwarding section here, you are given 2 choices for the type of forwarding you’d like to setup;

Keep a local copy?

Yes – If you choose this option, email will both be forwarded to the email account/s of your choosing and stored on our server here.

No – If you choose this option, email will only be forwarded to the email account/s of your choosing and will not be stored on our server here.


For more information about your email account, please refer to our other FAQ pages or feel free to contact us.

Tags: email, full, mailbox, mailbox full