Setting up email forwarding in cPanel couldn’t be easier.

1. Log into your cPanel hosting account via the link provided by your hosting company. (if you don’t currently have cPanel hosting you can find out more here)

2. You should be looking at something like :-

3. Select “Forwarders”

4. On the next screen select the button called “Add Forwarder”

5. The next screen is the email forwarder screen, enter the requested details (i.e Email address, destination address) and click “add forwarder”

And that’s it! Your email forwarder has been set up successfully. You can test it immediately by sending a mail to the forwarding email address that you have just set up.

What are email address forwarders used for?

One of the main uses for an email forwarder is if you are a small company with a few email addresses like ‘sales@’, ‘info@’, ‘support@’, rather than having 3 separate email accounts you could set up one pop mail account for ‘info@’ and then set the other two mail accounts up as forwarders to send their mail into the info account.

This save’s the hassle of checking 3 separate email accounts individually. The only drawback is that when replying to these emails the response will come from your info@ account.

This tutorial will be separated into the following two segments :

• 1. How to set up your email address in your cPanel Hosting control panel (If you do not currently have a cPanel hosting account please view our cPanel hosting page for more information)
• 2. How to setup your Outlook or Thunderbird to collect the mail

   
If you don’t have Outlook already it can be bought here
Thunderbird is our recommended email client and can be downloaded free of charge here

1. Setting up your email account in cPanel

First of all, don’t panic! This is a really easy process and you do not need to be proficient in server administration to succeed!

a) Log in to your cPanel area (If you are unsure how to do this, consult the hosting account details that should of been sent to you by your hosting provider when you initially setup the account, or call your hosting provider.)

b) Once logged into your account you should be presented with a page that has options listed that look somewhat similar to the screenshot below :


Select the “Email Accounts” option in the “Mail” section.

c) On the next screen there are three options that must be completed.
1. Email : Add everything before the @ that you would like your email address to be (e.g info)
2. Password : This is a password specific for this email address alone.
3. Confirm Password : self explanatory.

Once completed click “Create Account” you should then see your new email account in the list.

And that’s it! Your email address is now set up on the server and is already receiving emails addressed to it.

2. Collecting your email in Outlook / Thunderbird

All mail accounts use the same information, but request it in different ways (Display wise). So below I will highlight the main settings, the rest are either not necessary to the workings of the mail client (such as the “Your Name” field) or I have overlooked them.

This tutorial makes a presumption that you know how to get in to your account settings to set up an account (hint : “Tools” menu if your unsure)

When setting up a new account; generally POP3 is all you will need, in another tutorial we will explore IMAP.

Important Settings :
E-mail Address – This should be set (obvious I suppose) to your full email address.
Password – This should be the specific password you set for this email account in cPanel.

Often mail software these days will attempt to set up the rest of the account for you. So below are the settings it should of preset for you.

Incoming Mail Server : mail.[your domain]
Outgoing Mail Server : mail.[your domain]
[your domain] will be the everything after the @ in your email address.

Username – Should be (in most cases) your full email address.

At this point you can test your account, receiving email should definitely be working. However, you may have trouble sending mail as some servers require authentication.

This option in Outlook is in the “More Settings” area of your settings page. Once the more settings window is open select “outgoing server” and tick “My server requires Authentication”

In Thunderbird this option can be found in the “Outgoing Server (SMTP)” option in the list of accounts on the left. “Connection Security” should be “None” and “Authentication Method” should be set to “Password, transmitted unsecurely” unless encryption is supported by your host of course.

Please feel free to post your questions / comments.