About responders

A responder is a method of automatically replying to incoming email.

Responders can be set up for aliases only. They cannot be set up for individual email addresses or mailing lists. Whenever anyone sends email to the alias, a prepared reply is automatically returned to the sender.

For example, you might want all email sent to your customer service department to receive an automatic reply about your hours and contact information. To do so, you can create an alias called customerservice then create a responder for that alias. Whenever email is sent to customerservice@<example.com>, the prepared reply is sent automatically.

# How responders differ from vacation messages

Both responders and vacation messages automatically reply to incoming email. However, they have these key differences:

- Responders can be set up only for aliases; vacation messages are set up for email addresses.

- Vacation messages are sent only once. If users send multiple messages to an email address that has a vacation message enabled, they receive only one automatic reply. Messages sent to aliases using responders receive replies each time the message is sent.

- As Site Administrator, you can manage all of the responders used on your site through the Site Administrator control panel. Vacation messages can be managed only by individual users through the User Administrator control panel.

# How to manage responders

You can manage all of the responders for your site from the Email Manager in the Site Administrator control panel.

From the Email Manager, you can:

- View existing autoresponders

- Add additional autoresponders

- Update existing autoresponders

- Remove autoresponders