How to create an email forward or alias in Plesk

This guide will show you how to create or add an email alias or email forward in Plesk. The first step is choosing whether you require a forward or an alias.

• If you’re forwarding to an external email address (one that does not share the same domain): then you’ll need to create a forward (see below)
• If you would like to have multiple addresses @yourdomain.com go to the same place: an alias is what you want! Examples of this below.

Mail Alias Example 1:

• You have john@yourdomain.com
• You want to also have messages addressed to info@yourdomain.com go to the same account

Solution: add info@yourdomain.com as an alias for you@yourdomain.com

Mail Alias Example 2:

• You have the mail account john@yourdomain.com that forwards to johnsmith123@gmail.com
• You want to also have info@yourdomain.com forward to the same Gmail account.

Solution: add info@yourdomain.com as an alias for you@yourdomain.com — there’s no need to have both of them separately forwarding emails to your external email account.

How to create a mail alias in Plesk

1. Follow this guide to log in to Plesk
2. Once in Plesk choose the Mail tab
3. To set up a mail alias, click on your mail account in the list (there should already be one here) to get started.
4. Choose the Email Aliases tab
5. Either enter in your alias or click on Add email alias then enter it in if you need additional entries.
6. Choose OK

Now whenever someone emails your alias, the messages will automatically flow through to the master email account to which the alias was applied.

How to create a mail forward or redirect in Plesk

To enable a redirect or forward (these are the same thing):

1. Follow this guide to log in to Plesk
2. Choose the “Mail” tab on the left, or click “Email Addresses” under the domain
3. Choose the “Create Email Address” button
4. Fill in the mailname you wish to use and provide a password
5. Choose the Forwarding tab
6. Check the box “Switch on mail forwarding“
7. Check the box beside “Do not deliver copies of forwarded emails to the Plesk mailbox“
8. Supply the address(es) you wish to forward to in the provided box
9. Click OK.

You’re done!

Important Caveats with Forwarding:

1. We can not provide tech support for mail delivery beyond our servers, as we do not have the access necessary to do so. We will support incoming mail through to the point where your configured forward shows it leaving our servers, but beyond that obtaining support will be up to the company providing email service at the next destination email address.
2. In the event you receive too much spam that is then forwarded on to a 3rd party email service it is likely that our server admins will dramatically lower your spam score threshold to prevent spam from being forwarded from our servers. This ensures our server reputation is not damaged because of your forwarding configuration.
3. If you encounter issues with forwarding, like expected messages not arriving at the final destination, you should disabling forwarding and either 1) access the email account directly, or 2) switch to POP retrieval, which is supported by many 3rd party email providers like Gmail and Hotmail. Rather than having our server push messages to your preferred email account, an account configured with POP retrieval will instead pull the messages from our servers. Here’s how to configure Gmail to do this. And here’s one for Outlook.com (Hotmail).

Troubleshooting Setting up a Forward

If Plesk provides an error like “emails outside of the domain need to be entered by an administrator” this occurs because you’re logged in as the mail account user and it hasn’t been provided access to make this change. You must log in to Plesk as your admin user to have access to create this type of forward.