Introduction

An Autoresponder is a user-configured service that will send a predefined message to anyone sending emails TO the email accounts for a certain domain name associated with your Web Hosting Account. Configuring an Autoresponder will make your website look more professional in the eyes of your customers when they are reaching out to you via email. 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. Let's begin! 

Accessing the Autoresponders feature in cPanel

Autoresponders is a cPanel feature and as such before you can continue managing those, you will need to first access the cPanel service. 

Once logged into the cPanel service, please find the "Autoresponders" feature by either using the search 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 need to configure the settings for the Autoresponder. Let's review these, one by one. 

• Character set - 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 - 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 - The email account for which the autoresponder will be active. Please note that here you should choose only the account name and not the whole email account.
• Domain - Here you should choose the domain name associated with the account name you have entered in the previous field just so the combination of both fields should be the whole email account. 
• From - In this field you should type the name of the person or company the autoresponder will be using for the From field in the automated message. 
• Subject - Here you should input the subject of the email that the autoresponder will send. It is recommended for the value of this field to consist of 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 - 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 - In this field, you should configure the actual text that the autoresponder will return to the sender. You can also use HTML and special tags. 
• Start - 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 - 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.

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, please 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.