About email aliases

An email alias is a method of mapping a nickname to an actual email address. You can map aliases to:

- Mailboxes on your site's mail server

- Email addresses

- Other aliases

Whenever someone sends email to an alias at your site, the message is sent to all of the actual email addresses mapped to the alias.

For example, you could create an alias for your Sales department called sales. When anyone sends email to sales@<example.com>, the message is delivered to all of the addresses mapped to sales.

# How aliases and mailing lists differ

Aliases are similar to mailing lists in that you can map an alias to more than one email address. In effect, this creates a list with multiple users who can receive email through the alias. Aliases differ from mailing lists, however, in that they lack scalability. Mailing lists use Majordomo, a service that uses commands to add, remove, and manage the email addresses associated with the list and automates many tasks. Aliases are mapped individually either by Site or User Administrator; they lack the automated features of Majordomo.

Also, you can use responders to automatically reply to messages sent to aliases. You cannot use responders with mailing lists.

# How aliases work with responders

Aliases can be set up to use responders. Responders are prepared replies that are returned automatically to incoming email. For example, if you have an alias called sales, you might want to add a responder that automatically returns information about your sales department to the sender.

To set up an alias to use a responder, you first create an alias, then add a responder to it.

# How to manage email aliases

You can manage all of the email aliases on your site through the Email Manager in the Site Administrator control panel.

- Note: You and your users can manage the aliases you own through the User Administrator control panel. For instructions, see the User Administrator Online Help.

From the Email Manager in the Site Administrator control panel, you can:

- View all the email aliases used on your site

- Add additional email aliases

- Update existing email aliases

- Remove email aliases