Before I will explain how I managed to setup a catchall email with Google Apps, I would like to explain the concept behind the Catchall feature and how it can make your SEnuke life a lot easier.

What is Catch-All?

In the context of e-mail, a Catch-all usually refers to a mailbox on a domain that will “catch all” of the emails addressed to the domain that do not exist in the mail server. Configuring a catch-all address can help avoid losing emails due to misspelling. The problem is the many email hosts no longer permit catch-alls since many spammers abuse the feature by spamming random email addresses.

This is exactly the problem I had as none of my 3 hosting providers don’t support the Catch-all email feature so I had to figure out a different way to use it.

The final result will allow you to forget about all the email options SEnuke provides you with and you will use your own domain in combination with Gmail. I have been using this for a while now and I can clearly say that my submission success rates have improved significantly so this might be something you would like to try.

What You Will Need

In order for this to work you are going to need the following:

• Your own domain
• Google Apps account
• New Gmail account

The Setup Process

Sign up to Google Apps

Go to https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new, select Administrator and enter your domain name.

Insert all the information required in step 2 and step 3. You will than need to verify that you own the domain you entered by using one of the 3 options provided. I use the third option of uploading a file to my domain web server using FileZilla.

After you finish the verification process you will be directed to your Google Apps dashboard.

Click on the activate email at the bottom (marked with Green arrow) and follow the instructions. The activation process could take up to 48 hours according to what Google mentions but it is usually done in a few hours.

Next you will need to click on Service Settings (on the right side of the top menu bar) and select email.

Check the “Forward the email to” option under the Catch-add address. This will activate the Catch-all email option any email sent to any address that ends with @yourdomain.com will make its way to the address you will setup here.

Click save changes and than go to your inbox. All there is left for you to do is to setup a forwarding email address. I don’t know if this is a must as you can use the inbox you just created but I preferred to create a new Gmail account  and forward all the emails there.

Final Result

The end result of this is that I have a main email address which is for example – admin@mydomain.com and I setup forwarding for all emails to go to example@gmail.com.

Than, in SEnuke I simply enter any email address I want that ends with @mydomain.com and all those emails will land in my example@gmail.com. This is also the email address I insert into the email verification process in SEnuke.

I sure hope this guide is clear enough and will help you create your own Catch-all emails to use with SEnuke. As I mentioned before, I am seeing much better results after using my own email address and the success rates are higher.

If you know of any other way of getting your own Catch-all email working, than please feel free to share it by commenting.

Thanks.

Tagged as: Catch-All, Email, Gmail, Google Apps