cPanel Basics: What Are Mail Filters and How To Use Them

From a cPanel web hosting perspective, mail filters are different set of rules that are applied to all mail on your account or to an individual mail account. When these rules are met, a predefined action toward received emails is taken.

For instance, you might want to redirect all emails to johndoe@nowhere.com (this is the action) for which the body contain the word “sale”.

Let’s see how to do this.

How To Create Mail Filters With cPanel

Assuming you’re already logged in cPanel, click on the User Level Filtering icon from the Mail panel. We’re going to create a mail filter at the account level since we don’t want to impact all incoming mail.

Next click on the Manage Filters next to the desired account. You will then be brought to a screen that shows the current active filters (if you have any) and a filter test form. Click on the Create A New Filter button at the top.

For this tutorial, we’ll be creating a rule that redirect emails to another address.

First we’ll need to give a name to this new rule. Let’s name it “New Order Inquiry Notification”.

Ok next we’ll create a rule that will filter all emails that contain the word “order” in the body of the message.  Then we’ll select “Redirect to email” and enter “sales@yourdomain.com” (make sure this email account exists!).

Take note of the second action which says “Stop Processing Rules”. This action is important if you don’t want any further filtering of the email.

Once you’re done, click on “Activate” and click on the “Go Back” link on the next page.

Now using your email client, send an email to the filtered email account and if you’ve setup everything correctly, your email should be redirected automatically.

Of course this is not the best usage example but you get the idea!

Links

• BlueHost Website