I would like to suggest the ability for platform administrators to configure default email forwarders that are automatically created whenever a new domain with email service is added to Enhance.
There are several administrative email addresses that a hosting provider may want to maintain across all managed domains, for example:
At the moment, these forwarders can be created individually, but when managing tens, hundreds or even thousands of domains, creating and maintaining them becomes unnecessarily repetitive.
How it could work
There could be a section in the platform administration area such as: Settings - Email - Default Forwarders
The platform administrator could define rules such as:
Whenever a new domain with email service is configured, Enhance would automatically create these forwarders.
Additional options
It would also be useful to have options to:
Enable or disable each rule individually
- Automatically apply rules only to new domains
- Apply a rule retroactively to existing domains
- Define rules globally at platform level
- Allow reseller-specific rules
- Allow package-specific rules
- Define whether customers can edit or delete a particular forwarder
- Identify these addresses in the control panel as "Managed by platform" or similar
It would also be useful if changes to the destination address could optionally be propagated automatically.
For example, if: abuse@{domain} - abuse@old-provider.tld was changed to: abuse@{domain} - abuse@new-provider.tld
the administrator could choose to update that rule across all domains where it had previously been applied.
Why would this be useful?
Besides the administrative convenience, some of these addresses have important operational purposes.
Addresses such as postmaster@ and abuse@ are commonly used for email administration, delivery issues and abuse reports.
In a managed hosting environment, it may make more sense for these messages to be forwarded directly to the hosting provider rather than relying on every individual customer to create and maintain these addresses.
This would be particularly useful for hosting providers, MSPs and resellers managing a large number of domains.
This is not a catch-all
This functionality would be different from a catch-all address.
The intention is not to receive messages sent to any non-existent address on the domain.
The idea is simply to automatically create a small set of specific administrative addresses defined by the platform administrator and forward them to the configured destinations.
Practical example
A hosting provider could configure once:
postmaster@{domain} - postmaster@provider.tld
abuse@{domain} - abuse@provider.tld
webmaster@{domain} - webmaster@provider.tld
security@{domain} - security@provider.tld
From that point onwards, every new domain hosted on the platform would automatically have these addresses configured.
It seems like a relatively simple feature, but one that could eliminate a lot of repetitive work for hosting providers managing hundreds or thousands of domains in Enhance.
And, above all, everything would be properly configured and following the rules... como manda a sapatilha. 😄
(A Portuguese expression meaning doing things properly, exactly as they should be done... and with great skill.)
