Introduction

An Autoresponder is a service created by the email account owner that will send a predefined message to anyone sending emails to the respective email account associated with a certain domain name hosted on your Web Hosting Account. Configuring an Autoresponder will make your business look more professional in the eyes of your customers, colleagues or business associates, as when they try to reach you via email they will be notified that you are currently unable to read their message and answer them as soon as you can.

In the next lines of this tutorial, we will show you how to fully manage the Email Autoresponders for your cPanel based Web Hosting Account with HostArmada.

Without further ado, tet's begin! 

Accessing the Autoresponders feature in cPanel

Autoresponders are a cPanel feature, and like every other feature in cPanel, before you can start using them, you will need to access the cPanel service. If you are not sure how to do that, please check our tutorial about accessing the cPanel service.

Once logged into the cPanel service, please find the "Autoresponders" feature by either using the search bar provided at the top of the page or by locating the "Mail" features group.

By clicking on the "Autoresponders" icon, cPanel will redirect you to a brand new page which should be considered as the default page for the feature and this is how we will be referring to this page further in this tutorial. 

Adding a new Autoresponder

Now that you are in the right place let's add a new Autoresponder. To do that please click on the "Add Autoresponder" button under the "Add Autoresponder" section. 

You will then be redirected to a new page where you will see the available options and you can start configuring these settings for your Autoresponder.

Let's review these, one by one so you can get a better understanding. 

• Character set - Please use this drop-drop menu to select the character set for your Autoresponders. By default, the utf-8 charset will be selected, and we recommend leaving it like that, except if you do not need any other character set particularly.
• Interval - Please use this text field to set the interval for your Autoresponders. This configuration is used to set the time an autoresponder will respond to the same sender. Here you should set the amount in hours.
• Email - Please use this text field to type in the name of the email account you want to configure the email autoresponder for. Please note that here you should choose only the account name and not the whole email account.
• Domain - Please use this drop-down menu to select the domain for which you want to create the autoresponder. Please choose the domain name associated with the account name you typed in the previous field just so the combination of both fields should be the whole email account. 
• From - Please use this text field to type in the name of the person or company the autoresponder will be using for the From field in the automated message. 
• Subject - Please use this text field to type in the subject of the email that the autoresponder will send. It is recommended that the value of this field be consistent with the original subject of the message sent to the autoresponder. You can achieve that by adding the shortcode "%subject%" in the content of this field.
• This message contains HTML - Please use this checkbox to enable the Autoresponder feature to use HTML code. If the body of the message sent by the autoresponder contains HTML code, you should tick this option so the automated message can be sent in HTML format.
• Body - Please use this content box to type in the actual text the autoresponder will return to the sender. You can also use HTML and special tags. 
• Start - Please use this radio button to instruct when the autoresponder should start sending replies to emails received on the configured email account. Here you can configure it to take effect immediately or on a certain date.
• Stop - Please use this radio button to instruct when the autoresponder should stop sending an automated response. You can configure this option to "Never" if you would like the autoresponder to always send automated responses, or you can configure a custom date after which the autoresponder will no longer send automated messages. 

Once you are done with these configurations, please click on the "Create" button at the bottom of the page so your autoresponder can be created.

Once you click on the "Create" button, cPanel will redirect you to a brand new page indicating the status of the created autoresponder. If any errors are detected with the creation process you will be notified. To proceed further with this tutorial, please click on the "Go Back" button at the bottom of the page so you can return to the "Autoresponders" default page.

Managing existing Autoresponders

Now that you know how to add a new Autoresponder let's see what tool cPanel offers when it comes to managing already existing Autoresponders. If you are back on the "Autoresponders" default page, you should see an additional section called "Current Autoresponders".

In it, cPanel will provide you with a table containing all the autoresponders you have currently configured for your Web Hosting Account. Each Autoresponder will be displayed as a separate row in the table and the actions you can take for an Autoresponder are respectively "Edit" and "Delete" an Autoresponder. 

To "Edit" an existing Autoresponder, please click on the "Edit" link displayed in the last column of the table called "Actions".

You will be redirected to a new page that will contain the very same configurations as we discussed already in the previous topic of this tutorial "Adding a new Autoresponder", however, all fields will be already configured with the initial set of values for this autoresponder. Please edit these settings, and once you are ready, click on the "Modify" button at the bottom of the page. 

To "Delete" an existing autoresponder, please click on the "Delete" button displayed for each of the existing autoresponders in the "Actions" column. 

cPanel will redirect you to a brand new page in which you will have to confirm the deletion of the autoresponder by clicking on the "Delete Autoresponder" button. Once you confirm the deletion, cPanel will delete the Autoresponder. 

That's it! You are now aware of what an Autoresponder is and how to fully manage the Mail Autoresponders for your cPanel based Web Hosting Account. Please bear in mind that Autoresponders cannot be restored by our complimentary backup service. For that reason, we strongly suggest paying attention when you are editing or removing an Autoresponder. If you are not certain what you would like to achieve when managing your Autoresponders, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Technical Support Crew, since they will assist you with any Autoresponders issue you might face.