What is the Mail Default Address and why should you configure it

Sometimes your customers or partners may send emails to mailboxes of your domain that do not exist. Or they might make a typo in the name of your mailbox by specifying saels@domain.com instead of sales@domain.com, for example. In order not to miss those important messages, you can set the Default Address which will be receiving all the messages sent to non-existing mailboxes of your domain.

Check the default mailbox from time to time to avoid overflowing with needed/unnecessary messages.

DirectAdmin

1. Go to your client area to the “Services – My Services” section and click the “Open Direct Admin” button
2. The Direct Admin panel will be opened. Go to the “Advanced Features” section and click the “Catch-All E-mail” button
3. Set the “Address” option
4. Type in your existing mailbox name. While typing the name of the mailbox added to this panel, you will see a hint suggesting you autofill this field with your mailbox instantly
5. After the name of the mailbox is specified, click the “Save” button.

Now all the emails sent to non-existing mailboxes of the domains added to this panel will be stored inside this mailbox.

cPanel

1. Go to your client area to the “Services – My Services” section and click the “Open cPanel” button;
2. The cPanel will be opened. Go to the “Email” section and click the “Default Address” button;
3. From the “Send all unrouted email for the following domain:” menu, select the domain for which you wish to set or update a default address. Select one of the following settings:
   • “Discard the email while your server processes it by SMTP time with an error message” – select this setting to send an error message to the sender. Then, enter an error message in the “Failure Message (seen by sender)” text box;
   • “Forward to Email Address” – select this setting to forward mail to another address. Then, enter the email address or your cPanel account’s username in the “Forward to Email Address:” text box;
4. Click “Advanced Options” to view the following additional settings:
   • Forward to your system account – select this setting to forward mail to the system account;
   • Pipe to a Program – select this setting to forward messages to a program at the path that you define in the available text box;
   • Discard (Not Recommended) – select this setting to delete incoming messages and not send a failure notice;
5. After completion of the change, click the “Change” button.

The “Discard the email while your server processes it by SMTP time with an error message” feature is designed to solve the spam problem, so it is often preferred. The fact is that often to addresses (even if they do not exist) info@domain.com, admin@domain.com, etc. unwanted messages are sent. Thus, your mailbox will not be “clogged” with unnecessary letters.

ISPmanager

1. Go to your client area to the “Services – My Services” section and click the “Open ISPmanager” button;
2. Go to the section “Mail – Mail domains”;
3. From the “Mail domains” menu, select the domain for which you wish to set or update a default address and click the “Edit” button;
4. In a new window, you need to change the “Default action” — the action which will be taken if a letter arrives at this domain to a non-existent mailbox. Possible options:
   • Reply error — the sender will be notified that the mailbox does not exist (recommended);
   • Ignore and drop — if the mailbox does not exist, the user will not receive delivery failure reports. The mail server will not accept mail and will delete it;
   • Redirect to email address— if the mailbox does not exist, the user will be prompted for an alternative mail domain specified in the field  “Redirect to”;
   • Redirect to domain  — the mail server will try to find the mailbox on the mail domain specified in the field  “Redirect to”;
5. Click the “Ok” button.

Plesk

1. Go to your client area to the “Services – My Services” section and click the “Open Plesk” button;
2. The Plesk panel will be opened. Go to the “Mail – Mail Settings” section;
3. From the “Mail Settings” section, click the domain for which you wish to set or update a default address;
4. In a new window, you need to change the “What to do with mail for non-existent users” — the action which will be taken if a letter arrives at this domain to a non-existent mailbox. Possible options:
   • Forward to address – forwards the mail to another email address;
   • Redirect to an external mail server with the IP address – forwards the mail to the specified mail server;
   • Reject – silently rejects the mail without accepting it. This setting can decrease mail server load caused by a large amount of spam, which is often directed at randomly generated user names. However, this might be useful to spammers because scanning your mail server for valid email addresses will speed up in such a case;
5. After completing the changes you need to click the “OK” button.