Optimum makes no mail app, and it issues no new addresses
Optimum Email App: Optimum Email Settings, an Optonline.net App for Your Computer, and Optimum Mail in One Inbox
Optimum has no email program, and the My Optimum app only pays the bill. Inboxes opens your optimum.net or optonline.net mailbox over IMAP on any computer, beside Gmail and your work mail, and keeps it signed in.
mail.optimum.net · IMAP 993 · Nothing to install
In short
There is no Optimum email app. Optimum answers the question directly on its own help site: check your mail at optimum.net, or use a compatible email client on your computer and mobile devices. The My Optimum app is the account app for bills and Wi-Fi, not a mail reader. Connecting the mailbox to a program is easy once you know the one trick: IMAP and SMTP are both mail.optimum.net, IMAP on 993 with SSL and SMTP on 465 with SSL, with your normal password and no app password anywhere. The trick is the user name, which is your Optimum ID, the part before the at sign, not the full address. That is where most setups fail. Two Optimum rules make the choice matter more than it looks. Since May 4, 2021 Optimum has not created new email accounts for anyone, including existing customers, so the address you have cannot be replaced. And after 90 days of account inactivity the inbox and everything in it is deleted, not locked. A mailbox that stays connected in a client you actually watch is a mailbox that does not quietly run out that clock.
What Optimum publishes, and what it leaves to you
Which Optimum email apps actually exist
Search for an Optimum email app and you get the billing app, a sign in page and a dozen settings pages copied from each other. This is where an optimum.net mailbox actually stands.
There is no Optimum mail app, on any device. Optimum answers this itself. Its help article on checking your email gives you two options: sign in at optimum.net, click Email under Internet, or use a compatible email client on your computer and mobile devices. There is no third option, and there never has been an Optimum branded mail program for Windows or macOS.
My Optimum is the account app, and it is the source of most of the confusion. The My Optimum app, also published as the Optimum Support app, is a real first party app on both stores. It shows your statement, takes a payment, manages your Wi-Fi network and opens support. It does not open your mailbox. People search for an Optimum email app, install that one, and find a bill.
Your address cannot be replaced. This is the line worth reading twice. Optimum states that as of May 4, 2021 it no longer offers the ability for new and existing internet customers to create new Optimum email accounts. Not just new customers. If you have been an Optimum subscriber for fifteen years and you want a second address for your spouse, you cannot have one. The mailbox you hold is the last one you will get.
Optimum deletes on a schedule, and the schedule is aggressive. Trash and Bulk Mail contents are deleted after three days. Three, not thirty. After 90 days of email account inactivity, the inbox and all its content are deleted. And within 90 days of your internet service being disconnected, the address, the inbox and everything in it goes. Most providers park an unused mailbox. Optimum empties it.
The mailbox is 5 GB. With a 100 MB ceiling on any single message. On an address that has been collecting statements, order confirmations and photo attachments since the cable modem years, five gigabytes is not much room, and there is no upgrade to buy.
Webmail is the official desktop route, and it moved. Optimum migrated every email account to a new platform. The Address Book became Contacts, the Spam folder became Junk, the Help button moved into the header, and Optimum warns that certain settings, including email signatures and vacation messaging, may need to be reset because of the update. If your signature vanished, that is why.
Your password just works. There is no app password, no secure mail key and no OAuth handshake. Optimum tells every client to use the password for that email address, full stop. After fighting Yahoo app passwords or Gmail two step verification, an Optimum mailbox connects in about thirty seconds, provided you get the user name right.
The user name is the part before the at sign. Optimum spells it out: the user name is your Optimum ID, the portion to the left of at optimum.net or at optonline.net. Almost every third party settings page on the web tells you to enter the full email address, because that is what nearly every other provider wants. Here it fails, and it fails with a password error that sends people off resetting a password that was never wrong.
Every way to read an Optimum mailbox on a computer
Eight routes to Optimum email on a desktop, compared
What separates these is where they run, whether they can hold your other addresses at the same time, and whether anything keeps the mailbox signed in when you are not looking at it.
Swipe to see all columns →
| Route to Optimum email | Runs on | Holds other accounts too | How it signs in | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inboxes | Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, in a browser tab | Yes, one merged board | Your normal email password | 29 dollars a month flat, five mailboxes |
| An Optimum email app | Nothing. Optimum publishes none | Not applicable | Not applicable | Not distributed |
| My Optimum app | iPhone and Android | No, and it does not read mail | Your Optimum account | No charge, billing and Wi-Fi only |
| Optimum webmail at optimum.net | Any browser, any machine | No, one optimum.net address | Optimum ID and password | Included with the internet service |
| Apple Mail | macOS only | Yes, All Inboxes | Email password, but enter the short user name manually | Included with macOS |
| Classic Outlook | Windows | Yes | Manual IMAP setup with outgoing authentication | Part of Microsoft Office or Microsoft 365 |
| Thunderbird | Windows, macOS, Linux | Yes, through Unified Folders | Email password; correct the user name it guesses | Open source, no license fee |
| eM Client | Windows and macOS only | Yes, one folder tree | Email password | 59.95 dollars once for one device, or 39.95 a year |
Optimum details come from its own help pages: the server settings article, the article on how to check your Optimum email, and the About Optimum email page that lists the mailbox limits, the three day deletion of Trash and Bulk Mail, the 90 day inactivity rule and the platform change. My Optimum features are from its store listing and Optimum own app page. eM Client prices are from the US version of its pricing page. Apple Mail and Thunderbird both hold several accounts at no license fee, and if one combined list on one computer is the entire problem, either is an honest answer.
Optimum email settings for any client
What to type into any mail program
One set of values covers both optimum.net and optonline.net. The field people get wrong is the user name, and Optimum is one of the few providers where the full address is the wrong answer.
| Setting | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Incoming server (IMAP) | mail.optimum.net | The same host handles incoming and outgoing, which surprises people |
| Incoming port | 993 with SSL | 143 is listed as legacy clients only. POP is 995 with SSL on the same host |
| Outgoing server (SMTP) | mail.optimum.net | Tick outgoing authentication and use the same settings as incoming |
| Outgoing port | 465 with SSL | 587 is listed, but Optimum marks it legacy and does not recommend it |
| User name | Your Optimum ID only, not the full address | The part before the at sign. This is the single most common failure |
| Password | Your normal email password | No app password, no secure mail key, no OAuth |
| Works for optonline.net | Yes, identical values | Optimum states one set of settings covers both endings |
| Mailbox size | 5 GB, 100 MB per message | No larger tier is sold. A client makes it obvious what is filling it |
| Server side deletion | Trash and Bulk Mail after 3 days | Plus the whole inbox after 90 days of account inactivity |
Values are from Optimum own server settings article, which it also publishes under Optimum Business. If a client rejects the password, do not reset it yet. Sign in at optimum.net with the same credentials first. If the website accepts them, the problem is in the mail program, and nine times out of ten it is the user name: shorten it to the part before the at sign. If the website refuses them too, the password genuinely needs resetting, or the account has hit the inactivity rule covered next.
The rule that empties old Optimum mailboxes
90 days without use, and the inbox is deleted
Most providers handle a neglected mailbox gently. They suspend it, or they park it, and support can bring it back. Optimum states something harder: after 90 days of email account inactivity, the email inbox and all content will be deleted. Deleted, not suspended. Alongside that sits a second rule, that within 90 days of your internet service being disconnected, the address and everything in it is removed as well.
Pair those with the May 2021 decision to stop creating new Optimum addresses for anyone, existing customers included, and the arithmetic is unpleasant. A secondary optimum.net address that only collects a utility bill and one insurance renewal, opened twice a year, is three unremarkable months away from being gone, and there is no way to get the same address back afterward.
Optimum does not publish what counts as activity, so nobody should promise you that a particular client resets the clock. What can be said plainly is this: a mailbox connected to a client that signs in on its own is being opened constantly, by any ordinary reading of the phrase, whereas a browser tab you mean to check is only opened when you remember. Inboxes signs in to every connected mailbox on a schedule, at minimum once a day and usually far more often, for as long as it stays connected. The practical benefit is smaller and more certain than a promise about Optimum policy: mail that arrives at an address you never visit shows up in the same list as your Gmail, so you see it.
It does not replace a backup. If the address holds records you would hate to lose, move them out of the Inbox into a folder, export them, or keep a local archive in Thunderbird as well. And remember the three day rule on Trash and Bulk Mail, which is short enough that a message misfiled as junk on a Friday can be gone before Monday.
Setting it up
Optimum email in a desktop app, in four steps
No installer and no Optimum software on the machine. The connection lives with us rather than on each device, so every computer you open it on shows the same board.
Step 1
Check the password at optimum.net
Sign in once and open Email under Internet. If it works there, the credentials are fine and anything that fails later is a settings problem, not a password problem.
Step 2
Add the Optimum mailbox
Incoming and outgoing are both mail.optimum.net, on 993 and 465 with SSL. Enter your Optimum ID as the user name, not the whole address. An optonline.net address uses identical values.
Step 3
Add the rest of them
Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, iCloud, Zoho and anything at your own domain join the same way. Each row shows which account it arrived on, so replies leave from the right address.
Step 4
Let the sorting run
Each message gets a category and a spam verdict as it arrives, across every connected mailbox at once. Rules set inside Optimum webmail only ever see the Optimum account.
Where a browser client fits
What you actually get here
Not a nicer webmail. The job Optimum has no product for, which is holding an optimum.net address and every other mailbox in one list on a computer.
Optimum beside everything else
Your optimum.net address in the same stream as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, iCloud and your own domain, sorted by arrival with the source account on each row. Optimum webmail shows Optimum and nothing else.
An irreplaceable address, kept in view
Optimum has issued no new addresses to anyone since May 2021, and it deletes the inbox after 90 days of inactivity. A mailbox whose mail lands in the list you already watch is one you notice, rather than one you remember about in April.
Set up once, not once per machine
Thunderbird and Outlook have to be installed and configured on every computer, each with its own copy, and each one needs the short user name typed correctly. Here the mailbox is connected once, and the desktop, the laptop and a Chromebook all open the same board, which is also why it works as a Chromebook mail app.
The 5 GB ceiling made visible
Optimum sells no bigger mailbox, so the only way to stay under five gigabytes is to see what is filling it. Sorting by category across twenty years of statements and receipts is faster than scrolling webmail a page at a time.
It opens on any computer
Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS all load it in whatever browser is already there. No Optimum desktop app is needed, which is convenient, since there is not one.
Sorting across all of them at once
An address alive since the Cablevision years collects statements, order confirmations, renewal notices and newsletters nobody reads. A category and a spam verdict land on every one as it arrives, on every account rather than just the Optimum one, which also means fewer things land in a Bulk Mail folder that empties in three days.
Where this is the wrong answer
What Inboxes does not do
It cannot change Optimum deletion rules. Trash and Bulk Mail are emptied after three days, the inbox after 90 days of inactivity, and the whole address within 90 days of your internet service ending. Those run on Optimum servers and no mail client can switch them off. If something matters, move it out of the Inbox into a folder, or keep a local copy.
It cannot get you a new optimum.net address. Only Optimum could, and it stopped in May 2021, for existing customers as well as new ones. If the account is already deleted, nothing here recovers it. If it is simply locked behind a forgotten password, reset it at optimum.net before any mail program can connect.
It does not use OAuth anywhere. We connect with a user name and a password or app password over IMAP, which suits Optimum perfectly and rules out others. An outlook.com, hotmail.com or Microsoft 365 work address will not connect here. Optimum, Optonline, Suddenlink, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, iCloud, Zoho and own domain mailboxes all do.
No calendar and no contacts. We are a mail client and nothing else. If you want a calendar and an address book in the same window, Thunderbird, Apple Mail or Outlook covers that and we do not.
There is no offline mode and no permanent tier that costs nothing. It runs in a browser tab and wants a connection, and plans start at 29 dollars a month flat for five mailboxes. Optimum webmail is included with your internet service, Apple Mail comes with every Mac, and Thunderbird carries no license fee and merges accounts through Unified Folders. If one combined list on one computer is the entire problem, use one of those. The case for paying starts when you read mail on several machines, or when the volume itself is what you are trying to shrink.
FAQ
Questions people ask about the Optimum email app
Does Optimum have an email app?
No. Optimum publishes no mail app for Windows, macOS, iPhone or Android. Its own answer to how you check your Optimum email is to sign in at optimum.net and open Email under Internet, or to use a compatible email client on your computer and mobile devices. Every route it names is either a browser page or somebody else software.
Is the My Optimum app an email app?
No. My Optimum, also listed as the Optimum Support app, is the account app. It shows your statement, pays the bill, manages your Wi-Fi and opens support. It does not read your optimum.net mailbox. People download it expecting mail and find billing, which is the most common confusion in this whole cluster.
What are the Optimum email settings?
Incoming IMAP is mail.optimum.net on port 993 with SSL. Outgoing SMTP is also mail.optimum.net, on port 465 with SSL. The user name is your Optimum ID, meaning the part before the at sign rather than the whole address, and the password is your normal email password. Outgoing authentication has to be switched on.
What is the Optimum IMAP server?
mail.optimum.net, on port 993 with SSL. Optimum lists port 143 as well but marks it legacy clients only and does not recommend it. The same host handles POP on 995 with SSL, though POP pulls mail down to one device instead of keeping every device in step, so IMAP is the better choice for a mailbox you read in more than one place.
What are the Optimum SMTP settings?
mail.optimum.net on port 465 with SSL. Optimum also lists port 587 but marks it not recommended and legacy only, which is the reverse of most providers. Tick that your outgoing server requires authentication and tell the client to use the same settings as the incoming server, or mail will arrive fine and refuse to send.
What are the optonline.net email settings?
Exactly the same as the optimum.net ones. Optimum states that one set of values covers both endings: mail.optimum.net for incoming and outgoing, IMAP on 993 with SSL, SMTP on 465 with SSL. The user name is still only the part before the at sign. An optonline.net address is the older label for the same mailbox on the same servers.
Do I need an Optonline app password?
No. There is no app password, no secure mail key and no OAuth step for an Optimum or Optonline mailbox. Optimum tells you to enter the password for that email address, and that is what every mail program needs. This makes Optimum one of the simpler provider mailboxes to connect, which is genuinely good news if you have fought with Yahoo or Gmail app passwords.
What is my Optimum email user name?
Your Optimum ID, which is the portion to the left of at optimum.net or at optonline.net. This is the single most common setup mistake, because nearly every third party settings page tells you to enter the full email address and Optimum is one of the few providers where that fails. If the password keeps being rejected, try the short form before resetting anything.
Can I still get an optimum.net email address?
No. As of May 4, 2021, Optimum stopped offering the ability for new and existing internet customers to create new Optimum email accounts. Existing addresses keep working. That wording matters: even a current, paying Optimum customer cannot add one now, so an old optimum.net or optonline.net address cannot be replaced if you lose it.
Will my Optimum email be deleted?
It can be, and the rules are stricter than most providers. Optimum deletes the contents of the Trash and Bulk Mail folders after three days. After 90 days of email account inactivity, the inbox and all its content are deleted. And within 90 days of your internet service being disconnected, the address itself and everything in it goes.
Why did my Optimum email disappear?
Usually one of three server side rules rather than anything you did. Mail sitting in Trash or Bulk Mail is cleared after three days. An account nobody has opened for 90 days has its inbox and content deleted. And a mailbox tied to a disconnected internet account is removed within 90 days of that disconnection. None of these send a warning first.
How big is an Optimum mailbox?
Five gigabytes, with a maximum message size of 100 MB. That is small by current standards, and it fills faster than people expect on an address that has been receiving statements and receipts for twenty years. Reading it in a client does not raise the ceiling, but it does make it obvious what is eating the space.
Why is my Optimum email not working?
Check the account itself first. Sign in at optimum.net and open Email under Internet. If the website refuses you, the password needs resetting or the account has passed the 90 day inactivity rule. If the website works but a mail program does not, the cause is almost always the user name, because Optimum wants the part before the at sign, not the full address.
Can I use Optimum email in Outlook?
Yes. In classic Outlook choose manual setup, pick IMAP, and enter mail.optimum.net on 993 with SSL for incoming and mail.optimum.net on 465 with SSL for outgoing. On the outgoing server tab, tick that the server requires authentication and reuse the incoming settings. Enter your Optimum ID rather than the full address as the user name.
Does Optimum email work on an iPhone?
Yes, through the Mail app already on the phone. Go to Settings, then Mail, Accounts, Add Account, Other, Add Mail Account, and use the IMAP values above. Optimum lists iOS and Android among the devices it supports. That covers the phone and it does nothing for a computer, where Optimum still has no app of its own.
Can I read Optimum email and Gmail in one app?
Yes, in any IMAP client. Optimum connects with your normal email password and Gmail with a Google app password, and both land in one list with the source account marked on each row. Optimum webmail shows only the optimum.net mailbox. Pulling Optimum into Gmail instead relies on a Gmail feature Google is removing in January 2027.
Is Suddenlink email the same as Optimum email?
Yes, for practical purposes. Optimum absorbed Suddenlink and its help pages now describe features for your Optimum or Suddenlink email address together, on one platform with one set of rules. The 5 GB limit, the three day Trash purge and the 90 day inactivity deletion all read as applying to both.
What is the best app for Optimum email?
It depends on how many mailboxes you read. One optimum.net address on a Mac: Apple Mail, already installed. One address on a PC: Thunderbird, with no license fee. An Optimum address plus Gmail and work mail, read across more than one computer, is the case where a client that merges them into one list and stays connected on its own earns its price.
Related
Keep reading
Your Optimum address, and every other one
No app Optimum never made and no mailbox quietly running out a 90 day clock. Add the optimum.net or optonline.net address once with your normal password, then put Gmail, Yahoo and your own domain on the same board.