Catchall Email, Yes or No?
Hosted email service has an important feature called "catchall". It's provided by almost every email solution. Once you have enabled this feature to your email account, it will route all incoming mails to the specific address in case it's sending to some non-existing addresses. It's extremely helpful for those big business groups who heavily rely on email communication. But how will it help with personal webmaster? What would be the pros and cons to have catchall email enabled?
Pros of catchall email
Never loose a single email
Catchall is absolutely one of the smartest design of email. With a single address you can receive all incoming mails that's sent to non-existing addresses. You won't loose a single email if someone mistyped your contact mail address thus your potential business will be saved. Catchall is simple your email guard to ensure all your messages can be received.
Easy management
You might have to create multiple email addresses for different departments and people. However, maybe one person is in charge of multiple positions but you do have the need to show different contact email addresses for professionality. For this case, you just need to enable catchall for your main email account then provide any address on your website or business card, all incoming messages will be routed to your main address. In this way you don't have to login to different accounts to check new messages. You can manage all from the central account.
Less Costs
Most business email services are provided by the number of accounts. For example you might pay $10 per 5 addresses and some day you need one more account for different purpose. You have two options, purcasing new service from provider or simply enable catch all to one of your address. With catchall you pay nothing to service provider, it's absolutely good solution to reduce cost.
Cons of catchall email
Heavy spam is expected
The primary consideration for catchall address is spam. Since it will route all messages no matter if the receipient address exists or not, it's normall to see high traffic on this catchall address. If most emails are tagged as spam, you will have to find out the healthy messages in hard time. Unless you have good spam control system, catchall is not suggested for use. You must configure proper spam and content filters in order to make sure your catchall address will be working in right way.
Large storage is required
Because of the high traffic for catchall account, your inbox might be full in short time and you always have to clear out some old messages. It's not good solution if you want to keep all messages in same place. Unless you have lots of email storage and you can allocate by your own, catchall feature is not recommended to turn on. If you are on business trip for some time and forget to check emails, once the inbox is full, no incoming mails will be received. That means you have to check your chatchall address regularly to make sure your box storage is not flooded.
How to enable Catchall Email?
Different email programs may have different configuration guidance. Most email softwares provide this function from admin email accounts like smartermail. You just enable/disable the feature directly from user center. Since most users are cpanel based, here're the steps to enable email catchall from cpanel center.
- Step1. Loggin to cpanel control panel and scroll to "Email" section then click on the Default Address icon.
- Step2. From the drop-down menu select the (sub)domain for which you would like to set up a default address.
- Step3. Here you have several options, please select option 2 "Forward to email address" and enter the address you would to receive catchall mails.
- Step4. Click "Change" to apply the changes you have made.
Based all above explanation, please use catchall feature carefully and make sure to check the inbox often. Because you will receive lots of wanted/unwanted mails and they will eat up the storage quickly.