Guide · Bigpond & Telstra email problems
Bigpond email not working? Fix it today, then get off it.
Here's the short version. Most Bigpond and Telstra email failures come down to a password loop, stale settings, or a fault on the provider's side, and the first two you can fix yourself this afternoon. But take the hard truth with the fix: an email address owned by your internet company is a liability, and the long-term answer is moving off it. This guide does both.
Last updated 2 July 2026 · by Alien IT Solutions
Two problems, and you probably have both
Today's problem: mail has stopped, the password box keeps popping up, or messages send but never arrive. That's fixable, and it's below. The structural problem: your address belongs to a telco whose business is selling internet, not running email. That one never shows up as an error message. It shows up the day you want to change providers and realise your whole digital life is chained to a bigpond.com address.
Fix today's fault first, then read to the end: the migration section is what stops you doing this again next year.
Bigpond email keeps asking for your password? Break the loop
This is the most common complaint we hear, and the trap is where people type the new password.
If you changed your password, or the provider forced a reset after tightening security, webmail picks up the new one straight away. Your mail app doesn't. It keeps offering the old password, gets rejected, and throws the prompt at you on repeat. The fix is to update the password inside the mail app itself, on every device: phone, tablet, computer. Not just the pop-up box either. Go into the account settings and check both the incoming and outgoing entries, because plenty of apps store them separately.
If the new password won't stick, delete the account from the app and add it back fresh. Sounds crude, works reliably, because re-adding forces the app to negotiate everything from scratch. On an IMAP account your mail lives on the server, so nothing is lost.
One wrinkle: after a provider tightens security, older apps sometimes can't sign in the old way at all. One more reason to trust only the provider's current support pages, not a forum thread from 2016.
Telstra email settings: use the current ones, not an old blog post
The other classic breakage is settings: server names, ports and SSL. Telcos change their mail servers over the years. The old settings limp along for ages, then one day they're switched off and your app goes dark. Meanwhile the search results are stuffed with guides quoting servers that no longer exist. Stale guides poison this problem more than anything else.
So here's the rule, and it's the only settings advice worth giving: get your IMAP and SMTP details from the provider's own current support page, and compare them character by character against what's in your app. That page gets maintained; articles like this one don't, which is why you won't see a single server name quoted here. Any guide that quotes one is already on the clock.
- Incoming server. Name, port and security setting, exactly as published.
- Outgoing server. Same three, checked separately. It's a different server.
- Outgoing authentication. Must be switched on. This one catches the most people.
- Username. Usually your full email address, not the short name.
While you're in there: if the account is set to POP, re-add it as IMAP. IMAP keeps mail on the server and in sync across devices, and makes the migration at the end of this page far less painful.
Work out which side is broken
Two minutes of diagnosis saves an hour on hold.
Webmail is the referee. Test it first. If webmail works, the account is fine and no phone call will help; the fix is on your device. If webmail fails too, nothing on your device will fix it.
The hard truth: telco email is a liability
Now the part nobody tells you while you're stuck in a password loop.
It locks you in. Once your email lives at an address your internet company owns, changing providers stops being a simple price decision. People stay on plans they'd never choose fresh, for years, because leaving feels like losing their address. That inertia is worth real money to the telco, and you're the one paying it.
It's a side business. Telcos sell connectivity. Email is a legacy cost centre, and providers across the industry have been getting out of it, handing mailboxes to third parties or winding them back. Anyone whose OptusNet email stopped working has lived the result: the service changes shape around you and you get no say.
The address can die with the plan. Move house, switch providers, close the business, and the address every bank and government service knows you by can go with it.
Your email address is the master key to everything else you own online, because every password reset lands there. Renting the key from a telco was always a bad deal. It just took twenty years to become obvious.
How to move away from Bigpond email, properly
This is a parallel run over months, not a weekend job. In this order, it's painless.
Get an address you own
If you run a business, buy your own domain and put your email on it. It costs a few dollars a month and nobody can ever take the address off you. For personal use, a major free provider is fine. What matters is that it's neutral: not tied to your internet plan.
Run both in parallel
Set up forwarding from old to new if your provider offers it. Then update the logins that can hurt you first: banking, government, medical, insurance, super. Do those carefully, one by one, and confirm each. Everything else can wait and be fixed as it emails you.
Give it months, then retire it
Keep the old address alive and watch what still lands there. Each month the list gets shorter. Only when it's been quiet for a few months do you let it go, on your schedule, not the telco's.
The one thing you must never do: cancel the plan before the migration is finished. If the address dies with the plan, every password reset for every account still pointed at it goes into a void, and some of those accounts you will not get back. Migrate first. Cancel second. No exceptions.
The changeover checklist: do this before you touch a single login
We've moved a lot of people off telco email, and the moves that go bad all skip the same steps. The order matters more than the work.
Inventory the old address first. Before you close anything, build the list of every account registered to it. Go through your password manager if you keep one. Search the old mailbox for words like welcome, receipt, verify and statement; every sender that turns up is an account to move. Check bank and card statements for subscriptions that renew quietly in the background. The account you forget is the one that hurts, because you only find out about it after the address is gone.
Fix the recovery chain before you move anything. Check which recovery email each critical account points at. If your new mailbox's own recovery address is the old telco one, you've built a circle: lose one and you lose both, usually halfway through the move. Point recovery at an address that will outlive the change, and confirm you can actually sign in to it, before the shuffle starts.
Forward plus auto-reply, for at least a month after cutover. If the old service offers forwarding and an automatic reply, run both. The forward catches the mail; the auto-reply retrains the humans. Your accountant, your club, the supplier who emails twice a year: they'll keep using the old address for years unless something tells them otherwise. A month is the minimum. An address with decades of use behind it deserves longer.
Questions people ask
Why does my Bigpond email keep asking for my password?
Because the app is offering an old password the server no longer accepts. Update the password inside the mail app's account settings on every device, both the incoming and outgoing entries, not just in webmail. If it still won't stick, delete the account from the app and add it back; on IMAP your mail stays on the server.
What are the correct Telstra email settings?
The ones on the provider's own current support pages, and nowhere else. Server names, ports and security settings change over the years, and old guides quoting dead servers are a big reason working accounts break. Compare the published IMAP and SMTP settings character by character against what's in your app.
Why can I receive email but not send it?
Receiving and sending use separate servers, so one can break while the other keeps working. Receive-but-no-send points at the outgoing (SMTP) settings, usually the server entry or authentication being switched off. Send-but-no-receive points at the incoming settings or a full mailbox. Check the matching entry against the provider's current published settings.
My OptusNet email stopped working. What do I do?
Test webmail first. If webmail works, the account is alive and your app needs the currently published settings and the right password. If webmail fails too, the fault is on the account or provider side, so contact the provider. Either way, treat it as the warning it is: an address tied to an internet plan can stop being yours, so start moving to one you control.
How do I move away from Bigpond email?
Get a neutral address first, your own domain if you run a business or a major free provider otherwise. Run both addresses in parallel, forward old to new if you can, and update the critical logins first: banking, government, medical, insurance, super. Work through the rest as mail arrives, and only retire the old address after it has been quiet for months.
What should I do before closing my old Bigpond address?
Three things, in order. Inventory every account registered to the address, using your password manager, the mailbox itself and your bank statements, before you close anything. Fix the recovery chain so no critical account, including the new mailbox, recovers to the address you are about to lose. Then keep a forward and an auto-reply running on the old address for at least a month after cutover.
Will I lose my Bigpond email address if I leave Telstra?
Don't bet the house either way. What happens to an address after you cancel is provider policy, and policy changes, so check the current position before you rely on it. The safe play makes the question irrelevant: migrate to an address you control first, then cancel. Never in the other order.
Staying on a bad plan for the email's sake?
That's the lock-in doing its job. Send us your bill: the audit is free, and we'll tell you straight what the plan you're too chained to leave is actually costing you.
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