How to forward email

This guide shows how to forward email from an address on your domain to another email address, using Forwarders in cPanel.

Two kinds of forwarder

• Email account forwarder. Mail sent to one address, such as sales@yourdomain.co.uk, is passed on to another address.
• Domain forwarder. All mail for one domain is passed on to the same address at a different domain. For example, anything sent to yourolddomain.co.uk goes to the matching address at yourdomain.co.uk.

A forwarder doesn’t need a mailbox. You can create sales@yourdomain.co.uk as a forwarder only, and the mail goes straight to wherever you point it. If a mailbox with the same address also exists, it keeps a copy too.

Forward a single address

1. Log in to cPanel. See how to log in to cPanel.
2. Open Forwarders in the Email section.
3. Click Add Forwarder.
4. In Address to Forward, type the part before the @ and pick the domain from the list.
5. Choose Forward to Email Address and type the address the mail should go to.
6. Click Add Forwarder.

You can add more than one forwarder for the same address if you want mail to go to several people.

Forward a whole domain

1. In cPanel, open Forwarders.
2. Click Add Domain Forwarder.
3. Pick the domain you want to forward from.
4. Type the domain you want the mail to go to.
5. Click Add Domain Forwarder.

A domain forwarder only affects addresses that don’t already have their own mailbox or forwarder.

Remove a forwarder

1. In cPanel, open Forwarders.
2. Find the forwarder in the list and click Delete next to it.
3. Confirm when asked.

If it doesn’t work

• Forwarded mail goes missing at Gmail, Outlook.com or similar. Big providers sometimes reject or junk forwarded mail, especially spam that was forwarded on. Turn on spam filtering so less junk is passed along. See how to stop spam.
• Mail bounces with a loop error. Two forwarders are pointing at each other, for example A forwards to B and B forwards back to A. Delete one of them.
• Nothing arrives at all. Check the domain uses our nameservers. See why is my email not arriving.

Good to know

If you want to send replies from the forwarded address, it’s usually better to create a real mailbox and add it to your email program instead. See how to create an email account.

Still stuck? Open a support ticket and we’ll help.