Looking for general information on aliases?
A catch-all alias (also known as a wildcard alias) is one that allows all mail to any address at a custom domain to be filtered into a single account.
These types of aliases are useful if you'd like to have separate mail identities for sales@mydomain.com, support@mydomain.com, accounts@mydomain.com, but without adding extra users on your account. You can also use rules based on the To address of a message to sort mail into separate folders.
How to set up a catch-all alias
You can set up a catch-all alias by following these steps:
- Go to Settings → My email addresses.
- Click Add address.
- Click Create an alias.
- Enter an asterisk (
*) in the field, and choose your custom domain from the dropdown. This should look like*@<domain.tld>. Click Create alias. - A new screen will appear when you can set delivery and composing options for this alias. See the My email addresses page for more information.
- When you're ready, be sure to click Save.
In addition to receiving all mail addressed to your domain, you can also send mail using catch-all aliases. When composing a message sent from a catch-all domain, you'll be able to manually type the From address (e.g., sales@mydomain.com, accounts@mydomain.com, etc) or edit the subdomain (e.g. sales@team.mydomain.com).
If you have a specific alias already set up in your account, incoming mail will be delivered to that specific alias instead of the catch-all.
If you have address actions set up for a catch-all alias, the address actions will be applied to any messages caught by the catch-all. If a specific alias at that domain already exists, the address actions will not be applied to messages sent to that alias.
Blocking a catch-all alias
If you want to stop receiving mail to a specific alias at a catch-all domain, you can disable that alias so that any messages sent to the alias will bounce.
You can disable a specific alias at a catch-all domain by following these steps:
- Go to Settings → My email addresses.
- Click Add address.
- Click Create an alias.
- Create the alias you wish to disable and click Create alias. On the next screen, be sure to click Save.
- Next, go to Settings → Users & Sharing → Aliases.
- Click Edit next to the alias you wish to disable.
- Click Show advanced preferences.
- Find the Disable section and select the check box to reject all mail sent to this address.
- Be sure to click Save.
Mail sent to this address will be bounced as undeliverable. Delivery will continue for mail sent to all other addresses at the domain.
Information for Pobox users
If you are a former Pobox user who had a custom domain, you may have used the AllMail feature to receive mail to any address at the domain. In Fastmail, setting up a catch-all alias will have the same effect.
If you need to set up an exclusion, you can do so by following the steps outlined in the above Blocking a catch-all alias section of this help page.