Help Centre
› Webmail
› How to Manage Contacts
Creating, editing, merging and deleting contacts in SmartXHosting webmail — plus importing from external sources and keeping the address book tidy over time. A well-maintained contact database pays off every day; a neglected one becomes a UK GDPR liability.
- Open Contacts from the side panel (mobile) or the navigation rail (desktop).
- Tap + New contact.
- Fill in the detail form:
- First name, last name — both searchable.
- Email address(es) with labels.
- Phone number(s) with labels.
- Company, job title.
- Postal address (for UK contacts, use a full address line with postcode).
- Notes for freeform context.
- Save. The contact appears immediately in your list and syncs to any CardDAV clients within seconds.
Minimum required fields: at least one identifier (name or email). All other fields are optional.
- Open the contact.
- Tap the Edit icon (pencil).
- Modify fields as needed.
- Add new fields via the + Add field option — useful for extra phone numbers, custom fields, or alternative email addresses.
- Save.
Edits propagate to connected clients on their next sync. Typical lag: 30 seconds for CardDAV clients; real-time for webmail in another browser tab.
Bringing in contacts from elsewhere is usually the first task for a new mailbox.
From a vCard file (.vcf):
- Address book › Import.
- Select vCard format.
- Choose the file.
- Preview the parsed records.
- Confirm import. Contacts appear in the target address book.
From a CSV file:
- Import › CSV.
- Upload the file.
- Map the CSV columns to contact fields. Common source formats (Google Contacts CSV, Outlook CSV) have pre-configured mappings.
- Preview and confirm.
Pre-import cleanup tips:
- Normalise phone numbers to international format (+44 for UK) — improves mobile-client interoperability.
- Standardise company names (one consistent spelling per organisation) to prevent duplicate sub-categories.
- Strip trailing whitespace from all fields — it is invisible but breaks search and sort.
Regular contact backups protect against accidental deletion and are useful for migrating between mail providers.
- Select contacts (or Select all).
- Choose Export.
- Pick format:
- vCard 3.0. Widest compatibility — Apple Contacts, Google Contacts, Outlook, eM Client all accept.
- vCard 4.0. Newer spec; better support for multi-value fields.
- CSV. For spreadsheet analysis or bulk editing before re-import.
- Download.
SmartXHosting also runs nightly server-side backups of your mailbox (including contacts). Exports are an additional safety net you control directly.
Duplicates accumulate — a CSV import after a Google-to-SmartX migration, a contact added on your phone that existed on your laptop, a colleague's address saved twice with slightly different spellings.
- Address book › Tools › Find duplicates.
- Webmail scans for matches on email address, phone, and normalised name.
- Review each suggested merge.
- For each pair: choose Merge (combines fields) or Skip (keep both).
- Field conflicts (different phone numbers, different addresses) are flagged for manual resolution.
Merge is non-destructive until you confirm. A preview shows the resulting single contact before you accept.
- Select one or more contacts.
- Tap the delete icon.
- Confirm.
Deleted contacts move to a Trash area in the address book, auto-purged after 30 days — same pattern as mail deletion. Within the 30-day window, you can restore from Trash if deletion was accidental.
Beyond 30 days, recovery requires a server-side restore from backup (contact SmartXHosting support).
Business contact databases are personal data under UK GDPR — they contain names and identifiers of natural persons. Key principles to apply:
- Accuracy. Keep contact details up-to-date. Dead email addresses, obsolete phone numbers and stale titles degrade both usefulness and compliance.
- Data minimisation. Capture only what you need. "Favourite drink" and "spouse's name" might feel useful for CRM but have no business purpose for most UK SMEs and add privacy risk.
- Storage limitation. Define a retention period. Typical: remove contacts with no activity in 5 years. Adjust for your sector (longer for regulated client relationships).
- Rights handling. Be prepared to respond to erasure requests ("right to be forgotten"). A well-organised address book makes locating a subject's data straightforward.
- Security. Contacts, like mail, are in transit and at rest on SmartXHosting's UK infrastructure. MFA on your account is the first defence against account-takeover-based data exposure.
Webmail's address book is excellent for personal contacts and light team collaboration. It is not a CRM. Signs you have outgrown it:
- You track deals, pipeline stages, or opportunities alongside the contact — a CRM does this natively; webmail's Notes field quickly becomes messy.
- You need reporting (contacts per region, contacts by last-activity date, deal-stage conversion).
- You have more than 3-5 sales or account-management staff needing consistent per-contact history.
- You integrate with marketing email tools, VoIP phone systems, or finance software — all have CRM integrations and rarely webmail integrations.
Small UK businesses typically move to a CRM at around 10-15 staff or £1M revenue, when manual contact management in webmail starts costing more time than a CRM subscription.
Full CardDAV and backup. SmartXHosting Business Email stores contacts in standards-compliant CardDAV format, included in nightly server-side backups with 30-day retention. You can export your entire address book to vCard or CSV at any time for external backup or migration.
Q: Can I add custom fields not in the standard form?
A: Yes. Use the + Add field in the edit view. Custom fields store as extended vCard X- properties and sync to CardDAV clients.
Q: Do edited contacts notify recipients?
A: No. Changes to a contact are private to you.
Q: Can I bulk-edit many contacts at once?
A: Yes. Select multiple contacts and use the bulk-edit tool to apply category tags, change company field, or update mailing lists.
Q: How does birthday reminder work?
A: Birthdays entered on contacts appear in a dedicated calendar automatically. Subscribe in your calendar client for notifications.
Q: What happens if I delete a contact that is a member of a distribution group?
A: The group loses that member. Existing drafts with the group resolve to whatever membership exists at send time, not at draft-creation time.