An email alias is a type of email “pointer” that receives email at a specified address and then forwards it someplace else. One email alias can point to multiple email addresses, and multiple aliases can point to a single address.

One practical use of email aliasing is to create an alternate, easy-to-remember address for a long or awkward email account. This is similar to the practice of using words or phrases in place of telephone numbers. For example, a customer might have trouble remembering a phone number such as 1-800-932-8437 but have little difficulty remembering 1-800-WEATHER. Likewise, if you have an awkward address such as “11243.332@somedomain.com,” you may wish to provide an alias such as “bob@yourdomain.com” that is easier to recall and points to the same destination.

You can also use email aliasing to distribute email messages to a particular group of people. For example, if you have a group of friends or business associates to whom you regularly send group mail, you could create an alias called “everyone@yourdomain.com” that forwards mail to everyone in that group.

Finally, aliases can be used to give your organization a larger, corporate appearance. Instead of telling people to direct their questions regarding sales, support, employment, and general information all to the same address, you can create aliases at “sales@yourdomain.com,” “support@yourdomain.com,” “jobs@yourdomain.com,” and “info@yourdomain.com,” all of which can be redirected to a single address.
Creating Email Aliases

To view the aliases that are currently defined on your mail server, go to the control panel and select ALIAS/FORWARDING.

When your account was set up, we created an alias for you called postmaster that points to the root email address supplied when your account was created. As a result, any mail sent to “postmaster@yourdomain.com” will be automatically forwarded to your existing root email address (assuming you have one). The postmaster and MAILER-DAEMON aliases are special system aliases and in most cases you should not change them. All alias entries consist of two parts: the alias itself, and the address to which all email sent to that alias will be forwarded.

In the Add Alias interface, The alias can be any valid email name (a name that contains only a-z, 0-9, the underscore, dot, and dash characters). The E-mail Address can be either the username for an email account that is housed on your mail server, a complete email address for a domain that is not housed on your mail server, or even another alias on your mail server.

If you’re using an alias to forward mail to another alias or email account on the same mail server, DO NOT include the @ sign or the domain name. The alias name will be active for any and all domain names that you have associated with your account.

For example, suppose the domain name of your account is abc.com, and you want all mail sent to “dave@abc.com” to be forwarded to an existing email account at “dave123@isp.com.” To do so, you would need to go to the User Administration of your IMail Administrator and select Add Alias. In the New Alias box that appears you would enter Dave and in the Destination box you would enter dave123@myisp.com. Finally, you would press the Save button.

As an exercise, create a sales alias that points to your email address by following these steps:

• Log into the Control Panel.
• Select ALIAS/FORWARDING.
• Select Add Aliases from the Command Group menu
• Add the following entry, substituting your_ email_ address with an email address that you currently use, another alias on your mail server (such as webmaster), or the username for a POP account that exists on your mail server (such as the main administrative account):
  
  Alias: sales
  Destination: your_email_address

• Click Save. Your new alias will not take effect unless you update the alias settings via the Save button.

  Once you finish the steps above, test your new alias by sending an email message to “sales@yourdomain.com,” where yourdomain.com is your actual domain name.

  Assuming that you specified a valid address as your_email_address, your message should arrive at this address.

  IMPORTANT NOTE: When your mail server receives new email, aliases always take precedence over email accounts. Therefore, if you have an alias and an email account on your NT server with the exact same name, mail will be sent to the address defined by the alias rather than the email account.
  
  
  Creating Multiple Aliases and Destinations

  You can point a single alias to multiple destinations, or you can point multiple aliases to a single destination. In the following examples, assume that your domain name is “yourdomain.com.”

  Example 1: Pointing an alias to multiple destinations

  When pointing an alias to multiple destination addresses, separate each address with a comma:

  

  In the above graphic, all mail sent to “bob_and_sue@yourdomain.com” will be forwarded to “bob@domain.com” and “sue@domain.com.”

  Example 2: Pointing multiple aliases to a single destination

  To point more than one alias to the same destination, you could simply set up your aliases to point to the same email address. If that address is subject to change, however, you may wish to point one alias to the address and then point any additional aliases to the original alias. This method is especially useful if you have several aliases that point to a single address; if that address should change, you would only need to update a single alias rather than each one.

  In the following example, alias1 points to an email address that is not on your mail server. Another alias, alias2, points to alias1:

  

  

  In this example, all mail sent to “alias1@yourdomain.com” or “alias2@yourdomain.com” will be forwarded to “tt@your_domain.com.” Note that the destination of alias2 does not contain the @ sign or domain name, because it points to another alias on your mail server.

  If you want to set up additional aliases to forward mail to “tt@anotherdomain.com.” you can simply point them to alias1. If, at a later time, you decide to change the destination email address to “yy@anotherdomain.com” you would simply need to change the destination of alias1.