How to Create an Email Auto-Responder in cPanel

An auto-responder sends an automatic reply to anyone who emails you. It is commonly used for holiday notices, out-of-office messages, or confirmation replies for support addresses.

How to Create an Auto-Responder

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Navigate to the Email section and click Autoresponders.
3. Click Add Auto Responder.
4. Fill in the fields:
   • Character Set: leave as utf-8
   • Interval: 8 hours (prevents sending multiple replies to the same person within this time period)
   • Email: enter the part before the @ (e.g., info)
   • Domain: select your domain
   • From: the name senders will see in the reply
   • Subject: the subject line (e.g., Out of Office: [Subject] will include the original subject)
   • Body: your auto-reply message
5. Click Create/Modify.
6. Test by sending an email to the address from a different account.

How to Stop the Auto-Responder

1. Go to Autoresponders in cPanel.
2. Find the active auto-responder and click Delete.
3. The auto-responder will stop immediately — no more automatic replies will be sent.

Important Notes

• The Start and Stop fields let you schedule when the auto-responder is active. Leave them blank for always-on, or set specific dates for holiday replies.
• The Interval setting prevents spamming. If set to 8 hours, a sender only gets one auto-reply every 8 hours, even if they email you multiple times.
• Auto-responders work even when your mailbox is full — the reply is sent from the server level.
• You can use HTML in the body field to format your message with colours, bold text, and links.
• Only one auto-responder can be active per email address at a time.

Troubleshooting

• Auto-responder is active but not sending replies: Check that the email account is not over quota (full mailbox). Also verify the auto-responder start date has passed — if you set a future start date, it won't activate until then.
• Sender reports not receiving the reply: The reply may have gone to their spam/junk folder. Ask them to check there. Also, some corporate email servers filter auto-replies aggressively.
• Want different messages for different people: cPanel only supports one auto-responder per address. For advanced routing, use email filters (cPanel → Email Filters) combined with forwarders.
• "The email account does not exist" error: The email address you are creating the auto-responder for must already exist. Create it first in Email → Email Accounts.
• Auto-responder sends to forwarded emails too: Yes, this is normal. If someone emails an address that has both a forwarder and an auto-responder, they get both the auto-reply and the forwarding.

Need help? Contact our support team.