How to manage the default (catchall) email account in cPanel
Every cPanel account comes with a default (or sometimes called a catchall) email account. In most cases, we recommend that you want to disable it but there may be reasons why you want to keep it or change how it functions.
cPanel offers some flexibility on how to manage the default account. This article will walk you through how to do that.
- Login to cPanel.
- Under the email section, click on Default Address
- You can then select what you would like to do with the email account.
| Option | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Discard the email while your server processes it by SMTP time with an error message. | This will generate a bounce message (NDR) with the message you provide. This is not recommended. |
| Forward to Email Address | Enter an email address to forward all non-routable email to. This can be another email address on your account or an outside email address. |
| Forward to your system account - DEFAULT OPTION | This is the default option. All email will go to your default system account within cPanel. |
| Pipe to a Program | If you have a PHP or CGI script that can process the email, you can enter the path to this program. |
| Discard | This will silently discard any email sent to any email address that doesn't exist in the account. While cPanel does not recommend this, we do as if you don't check your system account often, it can use up your account's disk space. |
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- Article ID: 387
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