How to Forward Email or Create an Email Alias¶
When you want to receive email sent to a different email address you have the option of setting up a forward or an alias.
Forward vs Alias: What is the difference?¶
A forward is used to send email from one mailbox to any other email address, including email addresses not at your domain. For example, you could have emails sent to contact@example.com forward on to example@gmail.com.
An alias allows you to receive email from one or more alternate email addresses into a single mailbox. An alias must end with the same domain name. For example, if you had a main email of yourname@example.com and you then created the aliases contact@example.com, admin@example.com, and shop@example.com, emails for all of these addresses would be received the same as if they had been sent directly to yourname@example.com.
Forwarding Limit¶
There is no limit on the number of aliases you can have on a domain.
You can only have a total of 1,000 mail forwards on a given domain. This means you can have 1,000 email addresses with one forward each, or one email with 1,000 forwards; in both cases the total for the domain cannot exceed 1,000.
Using email forwarding to manage a mailing list is strongly discouraged. Instead, we recommend you use a third party mailing list service designed for that purpose. The higher the number of mail forwards you use, the more likely it is that your address will be labeled as spam.
How to Forward Your Email¶
Forwarding addresses make it possible to redirect mail from one or more of your domain’s email addresses to an external address. For example, you would use a forward if you want all email sent to contact@example.com to arrive in the mailbox for yourname@example.org.
Note
Mail forwarded will only appear in the final destination mailbox. In the above example, the mailbox for contact@example.com will end up empty while all of the email sent to that address will only be visible in the mailbox for yourname@example.org. If you want the message to also appear in the original mailbox you should add it as a recipient of the forward. In the example above you would add “contact@example.com, yourname@example.com” as recipients of the forward.
Before creating the forwarding address, verify that you are using Gandi’s MX servers. You can do this by visiting the DNS records for the domain and making sure that there is an MX record pointing to gandi.net.
Once you are sure that your domain is using our MX records, forward your email using these steps:
Log in to your account.
Choose “Domains” from the left menu.
Choose the domain that will have the new forwarding address from the list of domains.
Click on the “Email” tab.
Click on the “Forwarding addresses” option.
Click “Create a Forwarding Address” if this is your first forward, or the green “Create a Forwarding” button if you have existing forwarding addresses.
Enter the email address you wish to forward from and the email address you wish to forward to. Separate multiple addresses with a comma.
Click “Create” to finish the process.
Warning
Forwarding should not be used to send email to a long list of email addresses, such as for a newsletter or mailing list. Doing so violates Gandi rules and can lead to your email account being blocked. For long lists of email recipients, we recommend using a third party newsletter tool built for that purpose.
Warning
Since SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is designed to verify that an email being received is truly coming from the listed sender, mail you forward may fail SPF checks since it is being sent from your email server and not from the original listed sender. This can result in email you receive being incorrectly labeled as spam or failing an SPF check. Please keep this in mind when setting up an email forward.
How to Ensure Delivery to a Gmail Address¶
Gmail has a tendency to consider forwarded email addresses as spam. This is especially true when you send an email from your Gmail that is then forwarded on to the same Gmail address. Because of this, users who are trying to test the forward sometimes have the impression that the forward is not working, when in reality the email was forwarded but then rejected by Gmail. The first step to avoiding this problem is to make sure that you have an SPF record in place, but further steps may be needed as well. We advise you to refer to Gmail’s own documentation on successfully forwarding email to a Gmail account.
How to Create an Email Alias¶
While a forward send email from an email address at one domain name to an email address at a different domain name, aliases do essentially the same thing for email addresses at the same domain name. You will receive email for every alias you create, as well as the original email address, in a single mailbox.
Warning
Do not create an alias address that is a duplicate of an address that already exists on your domain. For example, if someone has already set up david@example.com, and then another person using a different email address (let’s say mike@example.com) creates the email alias david@example.com, an error will occur. The email may be undeliverable or only go to one of the mailboxes.
To add an email alias:
Log in to your account.
Choose “Domains” from the left menu.
Choose the domain where you want to create the alias from the list.
Click on the “Email” tab.
Click the three dot icon next to the email address that will receive the emails addressed to this alias.
Click “Manage” from the list.
Click “Manage aliases”.
Enter the aliases in the box. To enter multiple aliases type one name per line. Only type the section of the email that would appear before the “@.” For example, to add admin@example.com you would just type admin.
Click “Update Aliases.”
Wildcard Alias¶
You can also use the wildcard character “*” to mean “everything”. For example if you put super* as the alias name, then emails sent to anything starting with “super” (supercat@, supercomputer@, etc.) will go to your mailbox.
Dynamic Aliases¶
You can also get some of the benefits of an alias without any of the setup by using a dynamic alias. You can add “+” followed by any combination of letters to your normal address to create a dynamic email address. For example, if your email address is yourname@example.com, an email address of yourname+anytext@example.com will arrive in your mailbox.
Dynamic aliases are most useful in situations where you want to avoid giving your normal address, but don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up a permanent forward. You can then set up a filter in your email client to catch any emails with a + in the to field and take any actions on them you specify.
For example, if you need to provide an email to a particular website you suspect will be a future source of spam you could use yourname+spamwebsite@example.com and any future emails sent to this address will be caught by your filter and dealt with appropriately. Additionally, if this is the only time you used this particular alias, you will know that any future spam addressed to yourname+spamwebsite@example.com received the address from this particular occurrence.
There is no limit to the number of dynamic aliases you can use. However, there is no way to generate a list of all the addresses you have used since they are not created through your account.