How to Setup cPanel email forwarding for a domain, email address, or multiple email addresses
By Jonathan Griffin. Editor, SEO Consultant, & Developer.
CPanel email forwarding copies incoming email at one address to a second email address. An example is when you have an email sent to [email protected], but you want to copy it automatically to your primary email account [email protected]
Email Forwarders are useful for many different scenarios:
- You may have multiple email addresses, but want them forwarded to the one email address you check regularly.
- You may have used free email services in the past like Hotmail or Gmail, but now don’t use them. You can forward any residual emails to your new email address.
- You may want to forward all your business emails to a colleague when you are away on holiday. This is especially useful when used in combination with a cPanel Autoresponder.
When configuring your email forwarder, you can either forward all email for your domain or forward all email for a particular email address. You can add multiple forwarders for a domain to cover multiple addresses should you wish.
How to Forward all Email for a Domain in cPanel
This tutorial will show you how to set up an Email Forwarder for all email accounts on the domain, including the default catch-all address.
Unfortunately, you cannot forward the messages to a specific email address. Instead, the emails are forwarded to the default email address, otherwise known as a catch-all email address.
You can find out how to configure the default address here.
- Click on the Forwarders icon
- Click on the Forwarders icon on the cPanel dashboard.
- Click ‘Add Domain Forwarder’
- Click ‘Add Domain Forwarder’ to go to the configuration screen.
- Enter the domain where all the emails should be forwarded.
As I mentioned above, you can only enter a domain, not a specific email address.
You will need to ensure you have a default email address configured at the domain you wish to forward emails.
- Enter the domain where the emails should be forwarded.
- Click ‘Add Domain Forwarder’
Set Up cPanel Email Forwarding for a domain or multiple email addresses
To create email forwarders for specific or multiple email addresses is similarly straightforward.
- Click on the Forwarders icon
- Click on the Forwarders icon on the cPanel dashboard.
- Add the email address you wish to forward from
The email address you want to forward from is entered in two parts:
- Address to Forward
- Domain
If for example, you wish to forward “[email protected]” you would add the following:
- Address to Forward text box: contact
- Domain Drop Down: jonathangriffin.me
- Enter the Destination Address
The email address you wish to forward to is entered in just one part:
- In the “Forward to Email Address” box, enter the forwarding email address.
- Click “Add Forwarder” at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
You do have a number of different options:
- Discard with error to sender (at SMTP time) - If you wish to discard all incoming email sent to that account, you can do so by selecting this option instead. You can also enter a delivery failure message in the text box, which will be seen by the sender.
- Advanced Options - Here you can choose to forward the email to a system account instead, pipe the email to a program (this is commonly used when integrating with third-party support programs for ticketing), or just discard.
How to Delete an Email Forwarder in cPanel
You can delete a forwarder at any time for a mail account.
Unfortunately, you are not able to change an existing forwarder, or temporarily disable it. If you wish to change or stop a forwarder, it must be deleted. You can then recreate it as required.
- Click on the Forwarders icon
- Click on the Forwarders icon on the cPanel dashboard.
- Click on the Forwarders icon
- Click Delete next to the forwarder you wish to delete.
- Confirm deletion
- Click “Delete Forwarder” or “Delete Domain Forwarder” (depending on the type you are deleting) to confirm.