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cpanelui forwarders email

Forwarders

Valid for versions 110 through the latest version

Version:

110

Last modified: November 1, 2024

Looking for this interface?
Note:

Your hosting provider can enable or disable this interface in WHM's Feature Manager interface (WHM >> Home >> Packages >> Feature Manager).

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 forward emails from an old address to a new one.

You can also 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:
  • You must create cPanel-managed email addresses before configuring forwarders for them.
  • To manage forwarders for email accounts that use the BoxTrapper feature (cPanel » Home » Email » BoxTrapper), use the BoxTrapper Forward List feature.
  • You cannot 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.
  • For information about creating a catch-all email address for a domain, read cPanel’s Default Address interface (cPanel » Home » Email » Default Address) documentation.

Email account forwarders

By default, the Email Account Forwarders table lists all email addresses in all domains that use a forwarder to redirect email to another address or service. To manage forwarders for a specific domain on your account, select the desired domain from the Managing menu.

  • 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 Actions column next to that email address. For information on tracing a forwarder, read the Trace a forwarder section of this document.
  • To delete a forwarder, click Delete in the Actions column for the forwarder, then click Delete Forwarder to confirm.
  • To change a forwarder, delete it, then follow the steps in the Add an account forwarder section below to recreate it.
Important:
  • If a forwarder shares an address with an email account, both will receive mail.
  • When you forward emails from an existing email account on the server, the system stores the emails in the account, then forwards them. To stop receiving emails in the account, delete it. Then, only the existent address will receive the emails.
  • 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 an account forwarder

To add an email 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 section, 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 existent menu:
    Setting Description
    Forward to Email Address The system will forward incoming email to another account or multiple addresses. To forward to multiple addresses, you must enter the destination addresses separated by commas 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 in both accounts.
    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

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 contain the appropriate shebang (#!). If you do not know how to add the shebang, name the script with the correct executable extension. The system will prompt you to automatically add the shebang.
  • 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.

Trace a forwarder

Tracing an email account forwarder allows you to locate a possible routing error, which may send emails to the wrong or nonexistent 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.
  • 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.

Domain forwarders

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

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

Because domain forwarders only work for undeliverable emails, you cannot access the emails 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.

Note:

To forward all of a domain’s undeliverable email to a single address, use cPanel’s Default Address interface (cPanel » Home » Email » Default Address). Any domain forwarders you set override the default address settings.

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 section, click Add Domain Forwarder. The Add a New Domain 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. To confirm your choice, click Delete Domain Forwarder.

Additional Documentation