iFastHostingHow to create a catch-all email address
How to make your domain accept mail sent to any address at all, and why most domains are better off without one.
A catch-all address accepts mail sent to any address at your domain that does not already exist as a real mailbox — so if someone emails sale@yourdomain.com when the actual address is sales@yourdomain.com, a catch-all set up on the domain still delivers it rather than bouncing.
Setting one up
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Open the email section of your control panel
Look for a setting labelled "catch-all", "default address" or similar, usually found alongside the domain's mailbox list rather than under an individual mailbox.
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Choose the domain
If your account holds more than one domain, select the specific one the catch-all should apply to.
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Set the destination mailbox
Choose an existing mailbox to receive everything that does not match a specifically created address.
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Save
The setting takes effect immediately for new incoming mail.
Why most domains are better off without one
The convenience of catching typos comes with a cost: a catch-all address also receives every piece of mail sent to a randomly guessed or automatically generated address at your domain, which is a significant amount of spam on any domain that has existed for a while. Automated spam tools routinely try common address patterns — info@, admin@, contact@, and thousands of random combinations — against every domain they find, and a catch-all delivers all of it to one inbox.
If a mailbox is receiving an unusually high volume of spam and a catch-all is enabled on the domain, turning it off is frequently the single most effective fix available — more effective than tightening the spam filter, because it stops the mail being accepted at all rather than accepting it and then trying to sort it.
When a catch-all genuinely makes sense
- During a migration or rebrand, temporarily, to make sure nothing sent to an old or slightly different address is missed while contacts update their records.
- On a domain used almost entirely for internal purposes, where the exposure to random spam attempts is lower than on a domain that is widely publicised.
- Where a genuine, ongoing typo pattern exists — for instance, a commonly misspelled business name — and capturing it matters more than the spam trade-off.
A safer middle ground: specific forwarders
Rather than a domain-wide catch-all, creating individual forwarders for the specific likely typos or alternate spellings you actually expect gives most of the benefit without opening the domain up to every random address a spam tool might try.
Turning it off
Return to the same setting in your control panel and remove or disable it. This does not affect any mailbox that already exists on the domain — only mail sent to addresses that do not correspond to a real mailbox stops being delivered anywhere and instead bounces, which is the normal behaviour without a catch-all in place.
If spam volume is the reason you are considering this, also check whether SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up correctly, and see cutting down the spam reaching your inbox for the other settings worth reviewing alongside this one.
Related reading
How to make one email address automatically forward its messages to another, without creating a separate mailbox for it.
How to cut down the spam reaching your inboxThe filtering settings and DNS records that between them reduce most of the spam a mailbox receives.
What is a mailbox quota and what happens when it is full?What a mailbox quota is, what happens the moment a mailbox reaches it, and how to free up space again.
Why your emails go to spam, and how to stop itEvery common reason outgoing mail is filtered as spam, ordered from the fixes that matter most to the ones that matter least.