cPanel Flash Tutorial: How to Manage Default Email Address?
This cPanel Flash Tutorial will show you how to manage "default / Catch-all email address". There are three possible settings - catch-all, blackhole or fail. Your default address can act as your Catch All email account. Alternately, it can automatically discard (blackhole) email messages received for non-existent users OR deny relay (fail) to the sender with the notification "No such address here".
If an email address is specified as the "default address", it receives all emails sent to addresses that are not setup as unique email accounts within your domain such as does-not-exist@yourdomain.com. Most responsible ISP's today use the "fail" setting on cPanel servers by default and catch-all option is disabled. However, if required, you can change this setting as shown in the cPanel web hosting guide below.
In order to receive mail, which finds its way into your catch-all "Default Mailbox", you must configure the address in your mail reader. If you don't, then all mail, which bounces to this address will sit on the server unread.
By using a free local mail server software you can have unlimited email accounts with the Catch-all option. Download all emails from the catch-all account in the local mail server and then distribute it to any number of users on your LAN / WAN. This sounds interesting but is not recommended because of reasons mentioned in Tip 3 below.
Denying email relay for non-existent users ("Fail" option) is strongly recommended as compared to Discard (blackhole) or catch-all. This is primarily because catch-all accounts are open invitations to spammers. They can send unlimited emails to non-existent addresses on your domain that will not be filtered by anti-spam software. The "Fail" option saves bandwidth, resources and complies with the SMTP RFC guidelines as the sender (SMTP server) gets the 'deny' command. On the other hand 'with the 'blackhole' option the discarded email sits in the server mail queue for days and the sender never gets informed that the message was not delivered as the email address (he sent the email to) did not exist.
View Video Tutorial- Login to cPanel web hosting control panel and click on Mail.
- Click on the "Default Address" link in the "Mail" area.
- Click on the "Set Default Address" link.
- Enter the complete email address in the field next to your web site name drop-down list.
You can enter :blackhole: to discard incoming emails to non-existent users, or :fail: to deny relay and notify the the sender that the email address he is sending emails to does not exist - Click on the Change button. Your new default email address has now been set.
