Creating email filters (per-mailbox and global)

cPanel gives you two places to filter email: Global Email Filters, which apply to every mailbox on the domain, and per-mailbox Email Filters, which apply only to one address. Use global filters for domain-wide rules like blocking a spam source; use per-mailbox filters for personal sorting, like moving newsletters to a folder.

Both tools use the same rule builder: pick a condition (sender, subject, body, header), pick an action, and save.

Global filters (apply to every mailbox)

Open cPanel using the one-click cPanel login on your service page, then find Global Email Filters under the Email section. These rules apply to every address on the domain.

• Set the rule name, then build a condition: for example, From contains a known bad domain, or Subject contains a phrase you want to block.
• Choose an action to discard, redirect, or otherwise handle the message.
• Save. The rule applies to new incoming mail.

Global filters are the right tool for domain-wide problems: a spoofed sender hitting multiple mailboxes, a vendor you want auto-redirected to a shared inbox, or a known-bad domain you want discarded.

Per-mailbox filters (apply to one address)

Still in cPanel, open Email Filters and select the mailbox you want to filter from the list. If you haven't created the mailbox yet, see creating email accounts on your domain first.

• Build the condition the same way as global filters: match on From, To, Subject, or message body.
• Choose an action. For sorting mail into folders on most mail clients, a mail-client-side rule after delivery works well (most clients, including Roundcube, can file into folders after the message lands).
• Save. This filter only affects the one mailbox you selected, and only runs for mail delivered to that address.

Per-mailbox filters are the better fit for personal organization: routing a mailing list into its own folder, auto-discarding a specific newsletter, or flagging messages from a particular client.

Order of operations and testing

If a global filter discards a message, no per-mailbox rule ever sees it. Check that a global discard rule isn't catching mail someone downstream still needs. Test a new rule with a low-risk action first, such as redirecting or failing with a message rather than discarding, until you've confirmed the condition matches what you expect.

If a rule isn't catching mail the way you expect, check the exact wording of the condition against a real message header. A rule matching Subject contains "invoice" won't catch Subject contains "Invoice" if the match is case-sensitive in your cPanel version. When mail is bouncing or getting discarded unexpectedly, the bounce text itself is often the fastest way to diagnose what happened; see email bounce messages decoded for how to read those codes.

When filters aren't the answer

If a mailbox is bouncing mail because it's full rather than because of a filter rule, filters won't help. Check cleaning a full mailbox with Email Disk Usage instead. And if you're setting up filters as part of moving a mailbox to Flashcloud from another host, get the account created and mail synced first; see moving your email to Flashcloud from another provider.

When to contact support

If you've built a filter and mail is still landing somewhere unexpected, or you need a filter that spans multiple domains on the same account, open a ticket from the portal under Support. It's a real person, not a bot.