This article discusses the setup and use of a "catch-all" email addresses.

DETAILS:

A "catch-all" email address is really just a special 'email alias' and not actually an 'email account' or 'email user' itself. Catch-all email is also sometimes referred to as 'wildcard email'. Disabled by default, this special alias is designed to receive email at any address on your domain - provided email does not match any email users or aliases pre-defined on you service.

Example scenario
Let's assume your domain is 'my-domain-temple.com', and you have 3 users defined on your service that are Jane, Stacy, and Bob. Let's further assume that Bob is the account owner, but has asked that Stacy also be responsible for handling most of the email operations for the domain.

The group has decided that they want to have multiple 'role-based' email addresses such as 'info', 'sales', 'support', 'news', etc. Further they all have decided that receiving all email is important to them, even if someone has misspelled an alias or decides to use some other email address at their domain. They would rather not create the actual aliases or individual addresses for 'info', 'sales', 'support', 'news' - so therefore will use the 'catch-all' alias option which can accomplish similar results more effectively.

Bob accesses his WebControl panel and chooses the 'email alias' option. There may already be an alias named "catch-all", or if not, he will have to create it. he clicks "Add an alias", names it exactly "catch-all", and decides where the email will be sent.

They have decided that both Stacy and Bob will be in charge of reading all the role based email, and any catch-all email. Therefore when creating the catch-all email alias, Bob uses his control key (CTRL KEY) to select both his username, and also Stacy's username.

Now when anyone sends email to at any address other than jane@mt-example.com or stacy@mt-example.com or bob@mt-example.com, that email will be caught by the catch-all email address and sent to both Stacy, and Bob.

Useful points

• In the above scenario, Stacy and Bob will be able to accurately tell which email address the email in their inbox was actually sent to. Example, if an email was sent to sales@mt-example.com(which is sent to Stacy and Bob) they will see in the email header that the email was sent to sales@mt-example.com
• Using catch-all email for multiple role-based email addresses is extremely useful, efficient, and a great use of email aliases. Defined this way, an email user only needs to check one POP/IMAP account for hundreds of email addresses (aliases).
• Catch-all email can be used for companies that have external email servers and want to use "email polling" instead of special MX email setups.

Revisions:

07-20-2009: Minor Fixes