Email Forwarding and Aliases in cPanel

While similar, there is one main difference between email Forwarders and Aliases. The main difference being that while a forwarder will save a copy of an incoming email and then forward it to the target email address, an alias forwards the email without saving a copy. The main reason you would use an alias over a forwarder is so you do not need to manage the mailbox. In fact, an alias does not have a mailbox.

Here is how you would set up your email Forwarders and Aliases.

Accessing the Email Forwarders App

To set up your Forwarders or Aliases, first you will need to log into your cPanel. You can find a guide on how to access your cPanel here.

Email section

Once logged into your cPanel, scroll down to the Email section. How you proceed will depend on whether you want to create a Forwarder or Alias.

If you are creating a Forwarder, you will need to create the account in the Email Accounts app. Click here for a guide on setting up an email account.

If you already have your account set up, or you are making an Alias, click on the Forwarders app.

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Creating and Managing Email Forwarders and Aliases

Once you open the Forwarders app, you will see that it is divided into several sections:

  • Choose which of your domains you are currently managing

  • Add Forwarder
    • create a new forwarder
  • Add Domain Forwarder
    • create a forwarder for an entire domain

This is a list of all of your current forwarders. Here, you can see the name of the forwarder, the target and options to Trace or Delete the forwarder.

This option is the same as the Add Domain Forwarder option above. This allows you to forward all email sent to a domain to be forwarded to a different domain.

Managing

By default, cPanel will show all of your domains email forwarders and aliases. If you have several domains in your cPanel, you will be able to sort your by domain using this drop down.

Create an Email Account Forwarder

This tool will allow you to create a new forwarder or alias, as well as Domain forwarders. We will look at Domain Forwarders below.

Add Forwarder

  • enter the email address that you wish to forward
  • if you are creating an forwarder, the address must be an existing mailbox
  • for an alias, an existing account is not required
  • choose the domain name from the drop down menu

  •  Forward to Email Address
    • enter the email address that you wish the email to be forwarded to
    • you can enter several email addresses in this field, separated by a “,”
  • Discard and send an error to the sender (at SMTP time).
    • you can choose this option, if you want mail sent to this address to be deleted
    • you can also enter a response message
    • this can be helpful if you have an account that you no longer use

  • Forward to a system account
    • forward any email sent to this account to the default email address
  • Pipe to a Program
    • this is an advanced feature that is beyond the scope of this guide
  • Discard
    • this will permanently delete the emails sent to this account

To add a forwarder or alias, click on the Add Forwarder button.

Next, enter the name of the forwarder or alias in the Address to Forward field and then choose the domain from the drop down menu. If you are creating a forwarder, then you need to enter an existing mailbox. An alias would need a name that does not exist yet.

Finally, enter the target addresses for the forwarder or alias. You can enter several target addresses, you only need to separate them with a “,”.

Once you are finished, click on the Add Forwarder button to create the forwarder or alias.

Email Account Forwarders

Here you will see a list of all of your current forwarders and aliases for the currently selected domain. There is also a search box if you have several forwarders added.

You will see the name of the forwarder, the target and buttons to Trace the forwarder or Delete it.

Clicking on Trace will do a quick test on the path of the email forwarder.

Forward All Email for a Domain

In this section, you can set an entire domain to forward to another domain name. This is helpful if you have several domain names, but only use one primary domain name.

For example, say you have these domain names all registered:

  • example.com
  • example.org
  • example.pizza

You can set up your website and emails to use the .com domain name, and then forward website traffic to the site on example.com. This way, you only need to manage one website.

This option will also allow you to forward the emails in the same way. While you could create a forwarder for each mailbox using the method above, it is easier to just forward all emails using the Domain Forwarder.

When a Domain Forwarder is used, emails will be forwarded to the same mailbox, but using the target domain name. You do not need to create the email accounts on the forwarded domains (.org, .pizza).

  • bob@example.org will forward to bob@example.com
  • dave@example.org will forward to dave@example.com
  • frank@example.pizza will forward to frank@example.com

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