An email forwarder will allow you to automatically receive in a designated email account, a copy of every email sent to an email account. So, if you have created an email at yz@yyourdomain.com and created a forwarder which directs your email to a certain gmail.com account, it simply means that each time an email is sent to yz@yourdomain.com, you will receive a copy at the gmail.com account you have directed the forwarder to.
With email forwarding, users can use a single email account for receiving emails from different email addresses that they own. However this convenience might contribute to hamper your email server’s reputation. In addition to the increased load for the server to handle when emails get rejected by your remote email account mail server (for various reasons) which get filled up in the queue, it may also get your mail server blacklisted.
You may also want to read:
7 Ways to Build Your Email List
Any listserv or mailing list service?
Email Problems: What Should I do?
How to Check and Send Emails Using Webmail
How to Solve Email Bounce Back Issues
How to configure Email Client
Email forwarders have many usefulness. It is likely that you check your emails more regularly at gmail.com so you are more likely to know when there is an important email at yz@yourdomain.com
Forwarders enable you to be able to use a central email account to monitor all your emails and respond appropriately.
How to Set Up an email Forwarder in cPanel
In order to create email forwarding in cPanel, follow the instructions below:
For cPanel paper_lantern theme:
Log into your cPanel, navigate to Email section > Forwarders
- To create new forwarding rule, click on Add Forwarder:
- Fill out the fields and when ready click on Add Forwarder:
NOTE: You can forward emails sent to non-existent mailbox without having to create the mailbox itself.
If you would like to set up catch-all, you can use Default Address menu:
The default email address will 'catch' any mail that is sent to an invalid email address for your domain.
Also read:
How Did My Email Get Compromised and What Can I Do to Stop It?
How to enable spam assasin in cPanel
How to fix error 500 no such user here
How to grow your mailing list ethically
For cPanel x3 theme:
1. Log into your cPanel, navigate to section Mail > Forwarders:
2. To create new forwarding rule, click on Add Forwarder:
3. Fill out the fields and when ready click on Add Forwarder:
NOTE: You can forward emails sent to non-existent mailbox without having to create the mailbox itself.
If you would like to set up catch-all, you can use Default Address menu:
The default email address will 'catch' any mail that is sent to an invalid email address for your domain.
Also read:
Managing the Mail Function in CPanel
Webmail Programs in CPanel
What is Email Spoofing?
What is Spamming?
The Benefits of Email Forwarding
There are many advantages to using email forwarders instead of creating multiple actual (POP) email accounts. Let's look at a simple example:
Let's say you have a web site called example.com and you want to have 3 different email addresses associated with it, but you want all emails sent to those addresses to arrive at one main email address. You could simply log in to your hosting control panel (cpanel) and create the forwarders, for example, sales@example.com , webmaster@example.com , and info@example.com and have them all forward to one actual POP email account. The account they forward to can be an actual POP account that you have created on your domain (such as joe@example.com) or even a remote off-site email account that you have (such as you@gmail.com or you@hotmail.com).
Another simple example, yet very useful:
You can even create multiple forwarders for the same forwarder address that forward the mail to multiple other accounts. Let's say you want sales@example.com to forward to 3 people - you and two friends or associates. You can simply create 3 forwarders for sales@example.com and point each one to an actual separate email account for each of you.
Now, a more advanced example and explanation:
Let's say you have 3 people at your company, and you want all of them to receive everything sent to sales@example.com
Let's say the 3 people are Jim, Susan, and Pete.
Rather than making all 3 of you have the extra "sales" POP account configured on each of your computers, you can use this forwarding technique and a reply alias. It sounds complicated, but it's not.
Have 3 POP accounts setup, 1 for each user/computer:
jim@example.com
susan@example.com
pete@example.com
( but NOT sales@example.com )
Now, create 3 forwarders in your cPanel (hosting control panel):
sales@example.com ==> jim@example.com
sales@example.com ==> susan@example.com
sales@example.com ==> pete@example.com
Now the exact steps in this next part will depend on what email program you use (Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc
In your email software, there will be an option to create an "alias" or a "extra personality" or a "reply to" option or filter.
You can set it so that everything forwarded from sales@example.com to each individual POP account will automatically use "sales@example.com" as the reply-to address if you respond, and anything sent directly to your actual POP account will use your actual POP address as the reply-to.
This way, it functions like this example:
- When Jim replies to something sent directly to jim@example.com , the recipient will see that it came directly from him ( jim@example.com )
- When Jim replies to something that was forwarded from sales@example.com , the recipient will see that it came from sales@example.com
There are many other advantages to using forwarders / aliases, but the major ones are:
- You don't have to worry about too many connections from multiple computers to the same account (which could trigger flood control).
- You don't have to have multiple POP email accounts configured on each staff member's computer.
- You have less logins and passwords to remember.
- You can create as many forwarders as you want, and each forwarder can forward to as many accounts as you want (even email addresses outside the server, such as you@hotmail.com!)
- You can create forwarders that also send text messages to your mobile device or SMS capable pager.
- This way, all general public emails are routed to the appropriate staff members and services, but each staff only have one actual POP account. No matter who replies to a sales email, Jim, Susan, or Pete, it will look the same to the recipient - just " Your Company sales@example.com ".
- Not only does this cut down on resource usage and solves issues of too many connections, passwords, etc... but it saves on the amount of POPs used up within your hosting plan.
The Downside of Email Forwarders
There is a slight downside to using this method of receiving mail:
- It looks unprofessional if replying from a non-company e-mail address: In the 'pros' section above, we discussed forwarding to a company Gmail address if you did not have access to a mail program or webmail. While this can be a handy option, the downside to this is that all e-mails that are responded to will come from that Gmail address too. While some may not see this as a big problem, it can look unprofessional and some users may not trust the address as it is not directly affiliated with your brand (as it does not contain your domain name). Wherever and whenever possible, it is recommended to send and receive e-mails via a company email address (i.e. catherine@mycompany.com).
- Another potential problem is when the remote mail server uses SPF for validating the sender. Since email forwarding works like impersonating the sender as the receiving mail server just forwards the email to maintain the sender address, remote email servers with SPF will not allow the email to go through as the sending mail server could not be validated to the actual source details.
Basic Solutions
Forwarding “Catch-all emails” to an external mail server should be avoided. The best solution is to set the default box to :fail: so that messages are rejected and bounced back.
Instead of using email forwarding, create an email account instead of email forwarder address and use POP feature in your main email account (like Gmail) to retrieve those emails. Email forwarding under the same domain/server will be fine.
Having Isues With Implementing Email Forwarders?
This all depends on how your e-mails are hosted. Some hosts will allow you to access cPanel, therefore allowing you to add forwarders yourself through here. if you want some more information on how to do this, please see cPanel's official guide here. Some hosts do not allow this level of access, so it may need to be something that you request they implement for you.
What Google Recommends as The Best Practices
Here is what Google recommends verbatim::
If you're a mail server administrator:
Ownership and Filtering
"We recommend that you do not change the envelope sender when forwarding email to Gmail. Sometimes, when forwarding email, the envelope sender gets changed to your domain. When this happens, Gmail may learn that your domain is sending spam, and will treat other emails from this domain as spam as well.
Are you using procmail for forwarding?
Please note that procmail is one of the most common reasons why the envelope sender gets changed when forwarding. Adding the following to your config file will fix this issue:
SENDER=`formail -c -x Return-Path`
SENDMAILFLAGS="-oi -f $SENDER"
Alternatively, changing the envelope sender is ok if you do one of the following:
Put "SPAM" in the subject
OR discard any spam emails and not forward them to Gmail at all.
SpamAssassin is a free spam filter that can be used for identifying spam outside of Gmail, and putting "SPAM" in the subject.
Authentication
Do not modify, remove or shuffle message headers or modify the body of the message. DKIM or DomainKeys signatures will break if the body is altered, and all authentication information will be lost.
Common DKIM breakages include modifying the mime boundaries, anti-virus or anti-spam programs modifying the body of the message, expanding the message recipient using LDAP, and re-encoding the message.
Several highly-phished domains have asked Gmail to enforce strict authentication checks on their mail. These domains include eBay, Paypal, and Google. If your mail server modifies the forwarded messages from these domains, these messages will be marked as phishing.
One symptom of this problem is that a messages from these domains forwarded through your mail server to Gmail will have an Authentication-Results header that show that DKIM did not pass, while messages sent directly to Gmail will have a passing signature.
If you're not a mail server administrator, but use your mail provider's forwarding services:
We recommend modifying your forwarding settings to ensure that spam is not forwarded to Gmail. If you are unable to modify your forwarding settings, we recommend contacting the administrator of your mail service provider for further instructions.
Go to your Mail settings and Accounts tab and add the address you are forwarding from to 'Send mail as'. This is a new feature from user requests, where Gmail will detect that you forwarded from that account and help prevent displaying a phishing warning".
