Set up an autoresponder

Send an automatic reply to everyone who emails a given address — an out-of-office message, or an acknowledgement that an enquiry was received. Applies to shared, reseller and Premium hosting.

Create one

1. In cPanel, open Autoresponders under Email.

2. Select Add Autoresponder.

3. Fill in:

   Field	What to use
   Character Set	utf-8 — leave as is
   Interval	Hours before replying to the same sender again. Use 1 or more
   Email	The address the autoresponder answers for
   Domain	The domain it belongs to
   From / Subject	What the recipient sees
   Body	Your message
   Start / Stop	When it begins and ends

4. Select Create.

Always set a stop time

If you are setting up an out-of-office, set Stop to the day you return. Otherwise it keeps replying after you are back, telling your customers you are away.

Choose Custom rather than Never for anything time-bound.

Check it worked

Send a message from an address outside your domain — a personal account — and confirm the reply arrives.

Testing from another mailbox on the same domain does not always trigger it, since local delivery can bypass the autoresponder.

What it will not do

• It does not reply to spam. Filtered mail is rejected before the autoresponder sees it, which is deliberate — replying confirms your address is live.
• It does not reply repeatedly within the interval. A sender who emails five times in an hour gets one reply.
• It does not forward or store anything. The original message is delivered to the mailbox as normal.

Related

• Add an email signature in webmail
• Spam and virus filtering