How to set up a catch-all email account
What is a catch-all email account?
A catch-all email account is basically an inbox that is set up to receive all emails sent to incorrect or non-existent email addresses within a domain.
For instance, your domain is mydomain.com and you have created 3 personalised email addresses on that domain (e.g. mail01@mydomain.com, mail02@mydomain.com, mail03@mydomain.com). You can set 1 of those 3 valid email addresses as a catch-all email account.
If you set up mail03@mydomain.com as your catch-all email account, messages sent to misspelled or non-existent addresses like email04@mydomain.com or info@mydomain.com will all be routed to mail03@mydomain.com.
How to set up a catch-all email account
If you want to set up an email account to receive all stray emails addressed to your domain, follow the steps below:
- Click Sign Up / Log In at the top of this page.
- Select Hosting Manager from the drop-down menu.
- Enter your username and password and click Log In.
- On the Home page, click the word Email or the [ v ] arrow symbol on the right side.
- Next, click the Default Address icon, which is next to the MX Entry icon.
- On the next page, choose the domain you want to create a catch-all email account for.
- Choose Forward to Email Address and type the email address where you want to forward all your mail to.
- Click Change to confirm.
Important Note: Any email sent to misspelled or non-existent addresses on your domain will be sent to the address you typed in the text box under Forward to Email Address.
If you prefer not to receive mails for any invalid email address, you may also choose the following option instead:
| Discard and send an error to the sender (at SMTP time). | Stray emails addressed to your domain will be discarded and you can set a customised error message to the sender in the Message text box. This message will notify senders that they have a wrong email address. |
You may also prefer any of the following Advanced Options:
| Forward to your system account (your domain) | Stray emails will be forwarded to the system account. |
| Pipe to a Program | Stray emails will be forwarded to a program at the path that you define in the available text box below it. |
| Discard (Not Recommended) | Stray emails will be deleted and senders will not get any notification about it.
Important Note: This option is NOT recommended because the sender will not know that he has the wrong email address and the email delivery failed. |
Congratulations, you have now set up a catch-all email account.
Important Note: A catch-all email account can be pretty handy for handling stray but legitimate emails addressed to your domain. However, setting one up is strongly not recommended because it can flood your mail server with spam mail.
Instead of a catch-all email account, you can simply add commonly misspelled versions of your email addresses as email forwarding entries. You can set these by going to Email in the home page, then to Forwarders.