Creating Catch All account equivalent for hosted Exchange e-mail
How to create in hosted Exchange the equivalent of Catch All account in POP e-mail
Due to the following reasons we DO NOT provide CATCH ALL account feature but we suggest a workaround using aliases.
Reason: Catch-all account is essentially used in POP based e-mail services. All e-mails which have your domain name but no mailbox are directed to the catch all account. For example: if you have an e-mail address as smith@jonhdoe.com and if somebody sends an e-mail to sith@johndoe.com then this mail will land in catch all account as you don’t have an e-mail address as sith@johndoe.com. This sounds great; but has huge drawback. One scenario is if a spammer gets your domain name then he can send millions of mails to your domain all landing into your catcall account.
Workaround: We understand that you might need something similar to a catch all account. As an alternate, you can create as many aliases you want and there are no additional charges for setting up aliases. You can create aliases/contacts like sales@johndoe.com; news@johndoe.com; and have them redirect to specific mailboxes. The mailbox can be inside or outside the Hosted Exchange environment or even a e-mail address like Hotmail; Gmail and so on.
Reason: Hosted Exchange is used far more by SME’s; Corporate’s and individual business users. Due to privacy issues; catch all accounts are not preferred by business class e-mail users. For example: If an important document has been sent by your business partner and he mis-spelled the e-mail address; then its best that a bounce back goes to sender so that the sender realizes that he made mistake and resends the document to the correct e-mail address. In case of catch-all account; the sender may not know that he made a mistake by sending it to the wrong address and you might wait to get the urgent document and will not get it as the mail would go into the catch all account.
Related Links :
Hosted Apps – Exchange SharePoint
Hosted SharePoint Exchange Online Services
