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cpanelui forwarders email

Forwarders

Valid for versions 96 through the latest version

Version:

96

Last modified: April 3, 2024

Overview

This interface allows you to configure an email address to forward incoming emails to another address. This is useful if, for example, you want to use one email account to receive emails addressed to multiple addresses without having an account for each. Additionally, multiple email addresses can receive the same email. You can also set the server to discard email or send (pipe) email to a program.

Important:
  • This feature is only available if your hosting provider enables it.
  • This is not the BoxTrapper forwarder documentation. To manage forwarders for email accounts that use the BoxTrapper feature (cPanel » Home » Email » BoxTrapper), use the BoxTrapper Forward List feature.
  • You can not configure a wildcard redirect in the Forwarders interface. To learn more about wildcard redirects, such as how to create a redirect for all email sent to a domain, read our Global Email Filters documentation.

To manage forwarders for a specific domain on your account, select the desired domain from the Managing menu.

Email account forwarders

Note:

Forwarders do not store emails on the server. If you wish to create a forwarding address that retains a copy of inbound email, perform the following steps:

  1. Create an email account with cPanel’s Email Accounts interface (cPanel » Home » Email » Email Accounts).
  2. Create an email filter with cPanel’s Email Filters interface (cPanel » Home » Email » Email Filters) that contains the following two actions:
    • Configure the Redirect to email action to send to the desired destination address.
    • Configure the Deliver to folder action to deliver to the INBOX folder.

The Email Account Forwarders table lists all of the email addresses that use a forwarder to redirect email to another address or service.

  • To quickly find a specific email address, enter a keyword in the Search text box and click Go.

  • To view the route that a forwarded email takes, click Trace in the Functions column next to that email address.

    Note:
    If the server uses a third-party mail service, such as MailScanner, this feature will return invalid results. If you experience issues when you use this feature, contact your hosting provider for more information about your server’s configuration.

  • To delete a forwarder, click Delete next to that email address, and then click Delete Forwarder to confirm.

  • To change a forwarder, click Delete next to that email address, and then click Delete Forwarder to confirm. Then, follow the steps in the Add Account Forwarder section below.

Important:
  • If a forwarder shares an address with an email account, both will receive mail.
  • To stop receiving email at the account, delete it. Then, only the forwarder will receive email.
  • You cannot modify an existing email forwarder. To change the forwarding behavior for an address, you must delete the existing email forwarder and create a new one.

Add account forwarder

To add a mail forwarder, perform the following steps:

  1. In the Managing menu, select the domain whose emails you want to forward.
  2. In the Create an Email Account Forwarder menu, click Add Forwarder. The Add a New Forwarder interface will appear.
  3. In the Add a New Forwarder interface, enter the username of the email address you want to forward.
    Note:

    Your email username is the part of the email address that comes before the domain. For example, if you want the address [email protected] to forward to [email protected], enter purchases in the Address to forward: text box. Do not include the @ symbol.

  4. In the Domain menu, select the domain of the email address you want to forward.
  5. Select one of the following options in the Destination menu:
    Setting Description
    Forward to Email Address The system will forward incoming email to another account or multiple accounts. You must enter the comma-separated destination addresses of the forwarded email in the text box. For example, to forward emails from [email protected] to [email protected] and [email protected], enter [email protected], [email protected] in the text box.
    Note:
    Forwarding email accounts keep a copy of the emails that they forward. If you have access to both the forwarding email and the destination email, you can view the forwarded email at both locations.
    Discard and send an error to the sender (at SMTP time). The system will discard the incoming email and provide the sender with a failure message. The system sets the failure message to No such person at this address by default. You may also enter a custom failure message into the Failure Message (seen by sender) text box.
  6. Click Advanced Options to access the following options:
    Setting Description
    Forward to a system account Select this option to forward incoming email to a system user email account. To do so, enter the system user name in the text box.
    Discard (Not Recommended) Select this option to discard emails without a failure message. Emails sent to the initial address will not be forwarded. Unlike the Discard and send an error to the sender (at SMTP time) option, the user will not receive any failure messages.
    Pipe to a Program Select this option to pipe incoming emails to a program. Enter the program’s relative path in your home directory in the text box. For example, if the script requires an interpreter such as Perl or PHP, omit the /usr/bin/perl or /usr/bin/php portion of the path.
  7. Click Add Forwarder.

Pipe to a program

Important:

Make certain that your script uses the proper file permissions (0700). To change your script’s file permissions, run the chmod 0700 myscript.php command, where myscript.php represents your script’s location and file name.

Use the Pipe to a Program option to parse and enter email information into a different system. For example, use the Pipe to a Program option to pipe email information to a program that enters email information into a ticket system.

  • STDIN pipes email and headers to the program.
  • Pipes can accept variables from the $_SERVER array and variables on the command line.
  • The language or environment that you use may cause memory limit issues.
  • If your script produces any output, even a blank line, the system will create a bounce message that contains that output.

When you use the Pipe to a Program option, enter a path that is relative to your home directory. For example, to use the /home/user/script.pl script, enter script.pl in the Pipe to a Program text box, where user represents your username.

Important:

To pipe email to a script, the script must be executable and have the appropriate hashbang) (#!). If you do not know how to add the hashbang, name the script with the correct executable extension to be prompted to automatically add it.

Trace a forwarder

Tracing an email account forwarder allows you to locate a possible routing error, which may send emails to the wrong or non-existent location.

To trace a forwarded email, perform the following steps:

  1. Under the Actions menu, next to the forwarder you want to test, click Trace.
  2. The Track Delivery page that appears will show you the path that the forwarded email messages will take.
  3. The following icons help indicate where the message is going:
    • The red exclamation point icon () indicates that messages will encounter an error.
    • The file page icon () indicates that the forwarder will filter messages into a file.
    • The green globe icon () indicates that the forwarder will deliver the message to a different server.
    • The folder icon () indicates that the message will go to a local address on this server.
  4. To return to the Forwarders interface, click the Go Back button.
Note:

If you receive an error from a trace, verify that you entered the correct forwarding email address. For additional assistance, contact your hosting provider.

Delete a forwarder

To remove a forwarder, perform the following steps:

  1. In the Actions menu, click Delete next to the forwarder you want to remove.
  2. To confirm your choice, click Delete Forwarder.
Note:

It is not possible to modify email forwarders after creation. If you need to modify an email forwarder, you must delete the forwarder and then create a new one.

Domain forwarders

Domain forwarders redirect incoming email for invalid addresses to another domain.

The Forward All Email for a Domain table lists all of the domain forwarders for your account.

Important:
  • Domain forwarders only forward email when the system cannot deliver it to an address or autoresponder. For example, if you create a domain forwarder from the example.com domain to the example1.com domain and someone sends an email to the [email protected] address, the following actions will occur:
  • Domain forwarders override the settings in cPanel’s Default Address interface (cPanel » Home » Email » Default Address).
  • Domain forwarders only work for undeliverable emails. Because of this, you cannot access the email at the forwarding address. For example, if an email is forwarded from [email protected] to [email protected] because exampl3.com is an invalid domain name, you cannot log in to the invalid [email protected] to view the forwarded email.

Add domain forwarder

To create a domain forwarder, follow these steps:

  1. In the Managing menu, select the domain whose emails you want to forward.
  2. In the Create an Email Account Forwarder menu, click Add Domain Forwarder. The Add a New Domain Email Forwarder interface will appear.
  3. In the Domain menu, select the domain from which you want to forward email.
  4. In the Domain text box, enter the domain to which you want to forward email.
  5. Click Add Domain Forwarder.

Delete a domain forwarder

Next to the domain forwarder you wish to remove, click Delete Domain. To confirm your choice, click Delete Domain Forwarder.

Additional Documentation