Can you send mail before a domain is registered?

cPanel Forum
1

Hey forum friends, I’ve got a question: Can you send mail to a mailbox on cPanel using the server name?

For example, bob@customer.com is an email hosted on the server hostingcompany.com.

I remember you could get to someone’s cPanel by going to hostingcompany.com/cpanel_username (or something like that).

So, is there a way to send mail to bob@customer.com’s mailbox using an alternate address, like bob+customer.com@hostingcompany.com, or something similar?

Edit: My title might not be clear. This could apply to anything from a domain not registered yet, not propagated yet, or even testing complex mail routing issues. We want to send a message directly to the mailbox and rule out domain or routing problems. Thanks in advance!

2

If there’s no MX record in DNS, the mail won’t even leave the server. And if the domain isn’t registered, there won’t be an MX record in DNS either. So, no, the email won’t be sent.

3

Elaina said:
If there’s no MX record in DNS, the mail won’t even leave the server. And if the domain isn’t registered, there won’t be an MX record in DNS either. So, no, the email won’t be sent.

This isn’t about testing if mail leaves the server. It’s about checking if the server accepts mail. The sending account could be something like “abc123@hotmail.com” for all I care.

I’m troubleshooting an issue with odd mail routing (split server setup) that customer.com has, and I need to bypass that weird configuration to check if the user’s mailbox is accepting mail—without messing up 30 other accounts on the server.

The domain is set up on the server. Is there an address I can send mail to from a Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail account that will get to the user@customer.com mailbox on hostingcompany.com’s mail server?

4

@JakeWebb
If you just need to confirm the mailbox accepts mail, you could try using telnet to directly communicate with the mail server and send email that way.

5

Short answer: Yes, you can send mail from a test account if it’s getting delivered to the same server without an issue.