I thought I understood it already months ago, and now I am again confronted with the topic of Email Routing in cPanel and forgot even the basics about it, e.g. what is it actually for - outgoing emails from the server vs incoming emails? Why is it even anyway relevant when the MX record is external and has nothing to do with cPanel. Somehow I am not able to understand that topic.
docs.cpanel.net
Can someone explain this in layman's terms when I use Local Mail Exchanger vs. Remote Mail Exchanger
My situation:
Has cPanel Email Routing anything to do with actual mailboxes of my clients or is it only about how WordPress (the server) can send emails?
Why would it work when I send an email form within WordPress to [email protected] but it won't work when I send it to [email protected] (clientdomain.com is registered externally, DNS is managed externally, but cPanel account exists for hosting)
Can I say as a rule of thumb, I always need to set it to Remote, unless I use Mailboxes for the client that comes included via cPanel (instead of O365, Google, etc.)?
I am trying to further research and understand this, but perhaps someone can put it in more simple terms to finally see through this
Thanks in advance
Email Routing | cPanel & WHM Documentation
This interface allows you to configure how the system routes a domain's incoming mail.

Can someone explain this in layman's terms when I use Local Mail Exchanger vs. Remote Mail Exchanger
My situation:
- Reseller Account only for my clients as a web designer
- My cPanel Hosting Provider also has Mailchannels included (but that should be only for outgoing email filtering)
- Domain and DNS → always external, so the zone file can be completely ignored at cPanel. However, I probably must add the provided DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to the external DNS records
- Mailboxes and MX → almost always external (I only have one or two exceptions where I use cPanel Email)
- WordPress Website sends emails
- a) either directly from the server via phpmail from WordPress or
- b) from an SMTP Mailbox I get from the client e.g. [email protected] via Office 365 or
- c) via Postmark or some other Email Service Provider
Has cPanel Email Routing anything to do with actual mailboxes of my clients or is it only about how WordPress (the server) can send emails?
Why would it work when I send an email form within WordPress to [email protected] but it won't work when I send it to [email protected] (clientdomain.com is registered externally, DNS is managed externally, but cPanel account exists for hosting)
Can I say as a rule of thumb, I always need to set it to Remote, unless I use Mailboxes for the client that comes included via cPanel (instead of O365, Google, etc.)?
I am trying to further research and understand this, but perhaps someone can put it in more simple terms to finally see through this
Thanks in advance
Last edited by a moderator: