Removing a Domain from TrekMail

Removing a domain in TrekMail is a destructive operation — it deletes every mailbox on that domain along with all stored email, mail rules, aliases, contacts, and webmail data. This guide walks through what to do before clicking Remove, the deletion itself, and the cleanup tasks afterwards.

When you'd remove a domain

• You're migrating to a different email provider and TrekMail's role for this domain is ending.
• The domain itself is being decommissioned (you let the registration expire, or the business closed).
• You added the wrong domain by accident and want to clean up.
• You're consolidating domains and want to retire one.

If you're just consolidating mailboxes onto fewer domains, you can move mailboxes one at a time instead of removing the source domain entirely.

Before you remove — checklist

1. Export any historical mail you want to keep. Open each mailbox in an IMAP client (Thunderbird is fine for one-off archive), let it fully sync, disconnect with the local copy preserved.
2. Update MX records at your DNS provider to point at the new email host (or remove them entirely if the domain isn't going to receive mail anywhere). Without this, mail to your domain still comes to TrekMail and bounces with "550 User not found" because the mailboxes will be gone.
3. Confirm no critical aliases or forwards point at this domain's mailboxes. Other domains' configuration that references this one becomes broken.
4. Cancel any external services that send their notifications to addresses on this domain (Stripe, AWS, etc.). Update them with new email addresses on a domain you're keeping.
5. Tell relevant people (your customers, vendors, partners) about the upcoming change if they use these addresses.
6. Document the deletion for your team's audit trail — including which mailboxes were on the domain and where the export lives.

How to remove the domain

1. Open Domains.
2. Click on the domain you want to remove.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the domain detail page — the Remove Domain section.
4. Click Remove domain.
5. A confirmation modal appears, listing what will be deleted (mailbox count, etc.).
6. Confirm.

The removal is immediate:

• All mailboxes on this domain are deleted (same flow as Deleting a Mailbox, applied to each).
• Mail routing for this domain stops — incoming mail starts bouncing the moment the action completes.
• Webmail profiles for every mailbox on the domain are wiped.
• Domain row is removed from the Domains list.

What gets deleted

• The domain record itself.
• All mailboxes on the domain, with their full inbox/sent/drafts/folder contents.
• All aliases pointing at mailboxes on this domain.
• Forwarding configuration for those mailboxes.
• Mail rules / Sieve filters for those mailboxes.
• Webmail profiles (contacts, calendar entries, settings) for those mailboxes.
• Drive files owned by those mailboxes (if Drive was in use).
• Catch-all configuration for the domain.
• DKIM keys generated for the domain (we don't need them anymore).

What's NOT deleted

• DNS records at your provider — those are at your registrar / DNS provider, not on TrekMail. Mail to your domain stops being accepted by us, but if your MX still points at mail.trekmail.net, the sender will get an immediate bounce from us rather than the connection just failing. Update or remove your DNS for cleanliness.
• Historical aggregate stats at the account level — sent/received counts, delivery rates, etc. stay in the account analytics. Per-domain detail stops updating but the historical record remains.
• Stripe billing records — invoices showing what you paid for this domain stay accessible on the Billing page.
• Other domains on your account — they continue to work normally.

After removing — cleanup tasks

1. Verify MX records point elsewhere (or are removed)

Use dig MX yourdomain.com from a terminal, or whatsmydns.net. If your MX still says mail.trekmail.net, mail to that domain comes here, bounces immediately, and the sender gets a non-delivery report. To prevent this:

• Update your domain's MX records at your registrar/DNS provider to point at the new email host. OR
• If the domain isn't going to handle mail anywhere, remove the MX records entirely. Senders get a "domain has no MX" error from their resolver.

2. Remove other DNS records pointing at TrekMail

After MX, also clean up:

• SPF (v=spf1 include:spf.trekmail.net -all) — remove or adapt.
• DKIM TXT (dkim._domainkey.yourdomain.com) — remove.
• DMARC at _dmarc.yourdomain.com — keep but consider adjusting policy.
• TLS-RPT at _smtp._tls — remove or adapt.
• MTA-STS records — remove or adapt.
• Autoconfig / autodiscover CNAMEs — remove.

If you're moving to a new email provider, replace these with the new provider's equivalents.

3. Verify the new MX is live

After updating DNS, wait ~5-15 minutes for propagation, then send a test email to a freshly-created mailbox at the new provider. It should arrive there, not bounce.

4. Check for forward loops

If you set up forwarding from another email account (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) to a TrekMail mailbox that's now deleted, the source generates bounces. Update those source accounts to forward to your new mailbox.

When the "Remove domain" button is greyed out

• You're not an account owner or admin. Only the account-level role with domain-management permission can remove domains.
• The domain has an active migration in progress. Wait for migrations to complete, or cancel them first.
• Internal locks for billing or compliance. Rare; contact support.

What if you removed by mistake

The data is gone — there's no recycle bin for domain deletion. You can:

• Re-add the domain in TrekMail and reapply DNS records. The system treats it as a freshly-added domain — no historical mail comes back.
• Recreate mailboxes with the same names. New, empty mailboxes.
• Use Migration tools if you have historical mail archived in an IMAP client — import from the local archive back to the new mailboxes.

If you contact support within ~24 hours of accidental deletion, we may be able to restore from backup snapshots, but this is best-effort and not a SLA-backed recovery path.

Common questions

Can I remove a domain that still has active mailboxes? Yes, the deletion handles cascade automatically. The confirmation modal shows the count of mailboxes that will be deleted.

Do I have to remove a domain to switch providers? No. You can change MX records to point at a different provider, and we'll keep the domain inactive on TrekMail's side. This is useful if you want to "park" a domain configuration in case you switch back.

Does removing a domain refund anything? TrekMail bills at the account level, not per-domain. Removing a domain reduces your domain count but doesn't change your subscription cost unless you also downgrade.

Can I remove just the DKIM key without removing the domain? Yes, but not via the Remove domain button. Open a support ticket if you need DKIM-specific actions outside of full domain removal.

Does removing a domain affect my other domains? No. Each domain is independent. Other domains continue to receive, send, and be managed normally.