How-to · Beginner · 3 minutes each
How to Create an Email Forwarder
Everything you need to route an address to wherever the person who answers it actually reads mail — the steps in order, the snag to watch, and the tip our support desk gives everybody.
Straight answer first
In a line: route an address to wherever the person who answers it actually reads mail — a beginner-level task that takes 3 minutes each.
The walkthrough below covers every step, the mistake most people make, and the shortcut worth keeping. On Hosting Seller plans several of these steps are already done for you, and we say where.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 1 August 2026
Beginner
Difficulty level
3 minutes each
Time to allow
5
Stages
24/7
Help at any hour
This guide assumes no expertise at all — just a hosting account, a browser and 3 minutes each of attention. Every instruction works on our platform exactly as written, and carries over to any standard cPanel host.
One promise before you start: nothing in this guide is irreversible. Where a step could bite, we say so and give you the undo.
The shape of the work
The job breaks into a few clear stages: add the forwarder inside cpanel, decide whether a copy stays behind or not, point the roles at the people, test where it actually lands and review when people move on.
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking — the time it takes depends mostly on how familiar the control panel already feels. The detailed steps sit further down this page; skim the whole route once before you begin.
Where this goes wrong, and how not to
Building a loop. Address A forwards to B while B forwards back to A, and the result is a bounce storm. Mail servers eventually break the cycle, but the message dies somewhere in the breaking.
Forewarned really is forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the subject produces, and it is entirely avoidable once somebody names it.
The trick worth borrowing
When forwarding to Gmail, expect strict SPF checking at the far end to flag some legitimate mail. Adding the address under Gmail's 'send mail as' and checking the spam folder for the first week avoids surprise quarantines.
It costs a minute now and pays that back every time the job comes round again — which, like most hosting jobs, it certainly will.
What you can skip on a Hosting Seller plan
Several steps in this guide exist only because hosting historically made you do them. On our plans SSL issues itself, backups run daily without being asked, and one-click installers replace the manual setup entirely. What is left is the part that is genuinely yours.
And when a step misbehaves anyway, support answers at any hour with the actual fix, not a knowledge-base link and a shrug. Half our best guides began life as a pattern in the ticket queue.
Why the job is simpler on our plans
Every walkthrough on our how-to shelf is tested on the platform we actually run — cPanel, LiteSpeed, NVMe, one-click installs — so the instructions match your screen instead of gesturing vaguely at it.
Order an annual plan and the first year of your domain registration is on the house.
- Step by step, tested exactly as printed
- The snag flagged before you reach it
- The dull steps are already automated
- People on hand at any hour if you stall
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
The snag, named early
The classic mistake for this exact job is flagged before step one, so 3 minutes each stays 3 minutes each.
5 steps, no filler
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking, with the fiddly parts marked as fiddly.
Works exactly as written
Every step tested on the platform we run — no 'your host may differ' hand-waving anywhere.
The undo is always named
Where a step could bite, the guide says so and tells you how to put it back again.
No jargon toll
Terms are explained where they appear or linked to the glossary — nothing assumes you already know.
Help on the counter
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-guide included.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Add the forwarder inside cPanel
Go to Email, then Forwarders, then Add Forwarder. Enter the address that should catch the mail and the destination that should receive it. That is the entire configuration.
- 2
Decide whether a copy stays behind or not
Forwarding from a real mailbox leaves a copy behind in it. A forwarder with no mailbox underneath simply relays and keeps nothing. Choose based on whether that address needs a history.
- 3
Point the roles at the people
info@, sales@ and support@ forwarding to whoever answers them gives a company proper front doors without creating three more passwords for somebody to look after.
- 4
Test where it actually lands
Forwarding to an external service such as Gmail can trip spam filtering on the way in. Send a test and check which folder it arrives in before you print the address on anything.
- 5
Review when people move on
Forwarders quietly route company mail for years. Put 'check the forwarders' on the offboarding list so a departed colleague's address stops feeding an inbox nobody opens.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- One-click installs for WordPress and 400+ other applications
- DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
- SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for your own client
- Mailboxes that carry your own domain name
- LiteSpeed caching running at the server, not bolted on by plugin
- A 99.9% uptime commitment, watched by monitoring day and night
- A free SSL certificate on every plan, reissued before it lapses
- NVMe SSD storage on every shelf, not just the top one
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
Forwarder or a whole mailbox — which one do I want?
Mailbox when the address needs an owner, a history and the ability to reply as that identity. Forwarder when the address is just a route to somebody who answers from their own box. Roles usually want forwarders; people usually want mailboxes.
Why does some forwarded mail never turn up at all?
Filtering at the destination. Forwarded mail arrives carrying the original sender with your server in the delivery path, and some filters distrust that pattern. Whitelisting the path, or fetching into a real mailbox instead, usually settles it.
How quickly can I be up and running?
Minutes, not days. The account opens the moment the order clears, the domain — free for year one on annual plans — attaches straight away, and the one-click installer puts WordPress or any of 400+ applications on the page before you leave your chair. Already have a site elsewhere? Hand it over and we move it free, usually inside a day.
Can I test changes somewhere safe first?
Yes — plans with staging let you clone the live site, work on the copy, then push it across when you are satisfied. It is the difference between hoping an update behaves and knowing that it does before any customer meets it.
Which control panel comes with the account?
cPanel, which the whole trade already knows. That means every tutorial online matches what you see, your backups restore onto any cPanel host anywhere, and what you learn here stays useful for life. Plesk and DirectAdmin are stocked on specific plans for anyone who prefers them.
Are backups included, and can I put one back myself?
A backup is taken daily on every plan, and the restore is yours to run from the panel in minutes — files, databases or both, at three in the morning without waiting on a ticket. Keeping your own copy offsite as well is never a bad habit, and nothing here stops you.
Where do the servers actually sit?
Our hosting runs from European datacentres with London at the centre, behind server-level caching that keeps cached pages quick for visitors anywhere. For most sites the build of the platform — NVMe disks, LiteSpeed, sensible numbers of accounts per machine — decides the speed far more than the postcode does.
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