Email Quota Policy

PA Virtual Charter School offers all students and learning coaches individual email accounts. Email can be accessed either via the web (http://mail.mypavcs.org), or using an email client such as Outlook. (See the Login & Setup page for more information about accessing your email account.)

In order to effectively manage the storage resources, to maintain system stability and performance, and to ensure sufficient storage capacity is available to all users, PAVCS has limited each account to 50Mb of storage.

All users will receive a quota warning when they reach 90% capacity and they will continue to receive a warning as long as their email account remains at 90% capacity or greater.

If a user receives an email that will cause the account to go over the quota limit, then the server will automatically delete the oldest messages from the Spam mailbox, and then (if necessary) from the Trash mailbox, until the message can be saved. If the new message is large enough that it wouldn't fit even if all messages from Spam and Trash mailboxes were deleted, then none of the messages in the Spam and Trash mailboxes are deleted. The original email will be returned to the sender with a notice that the user was over quota and delivery was not possible.

New for '08-'09 School Year: In support of our desire to ensure sufficient storage capacity and to maintain system stability and performance, we will automatically delete messages stored in your Spam and Trash mailboxes for longer then 30 days. Any message that has been in your Spam or Trash mailboxes for longer then 30 days will be deleted each night, beginning September 1, 2008.

Quota FAQs

Why do we have a quota?
  • To maintain system performance: large inboxes can affect performance as there is a constant read/write action taking place on the server anytime an account is accessed. As quotas get larger, inboxes tend to get larger, increasing impact on the servers. By maintaining a quota we are helping maintain performance stability for all users.
  • Effectively managing storage resources: unlike other web based email systems, such as Yahoo and Google Mail, we do not possess the resources to increase email storage to allow for comparable quotas. By setting quotas we can ensure that all users will have access to a certain amount of storage space.
Why does my mailbox fill up so fast?

The three main reasons mailboxes fill up so fast are:

  1. not emptying the trash
  2. saving email on the server instead of locally
  3. too many large attachments

There are work arounds for this:

  1. You can easily empty your trash by logging into the web interface, and clicking on the word "Purge" right next to your Trash folder in the Folders list.
  2. To save email locally instead of on the server you can use an email client such as Outlook to check your email. Or, you can use the "Download this as a file" link while viewing the email you wish to save.
  3. When you recieve large attachments, you should save the email and/or the attachment to your computer (as noted above) and then delete the email from the server.
What about all the Spam that takes up space in my Spam folder?

All email messages marked as spam are automatically transferred to your Spam folder. By default spam messages are kept for 30 days before being automatically deleted, although you can delete spam at anytime. This is done to provide you with an opportunity to check your spam folder in case our spam software marked a legitimate email as spam. Proper management of Spam will help reduce the space used up by spam. (Learn more about our spam filtering software.)

How can I check how much space I am using?

You can check your current usage by logging into the web interface. In the upper left corner, you will see a small graph showing you your current disk usage.

Can I have an increased quota?

There will be no exceptions made to the quota at this time. PAVCS needs to ensure that there is enough space for all of the users.

As resources become available to increase storage capacity on our email servers, we can investigate the needs of our users and then consider increasing the quota.