There are many reasons you might want emails to your inbox to receive an automatic reply, for example - you're going on holiday and need your customers to know when you'll be back, or you want people to know that their email has been received.


Whatever the reason, we've made the process quick and easy.


Step 1 - Log in to webmail


Go to your-web-address/webmail and log in using your email address and password


Step 2 - Navigate to the Autoresponder control panel


Once logged in, click your email address in the status bar at the top of the screen. Then click, 'Autoresponders'


Step 3 - Set it up


Click, 'Add Autoresponder'


Character Set - Keep this at UTF-8


Interval - This is the amount of time you want to pass before the auto-respond message is sent to the same recipient. Generally once every 24 hours is considered acceptable, but you can change this depending on the expected frequency of incoming emails.


From - This doesn't have to be your email address, but anything you want to appear in the recipient's preview of your auto-respond. For example, 'Mary at Twist Development'


Subject - This can be anything you want it to be, and would appear as a normal email Subject would. For example - 'I'm out of the office until 1st May', or 'Thanks for your email, I'll be in touch'


Body - This can be anything you want it to be, and would appear as a normal email body. Give more detail about your auto-response, and tell people when you'll be back if you're going to be away.


This message contains HTML - As with any normal email, if you're confident in coding then you'll be able to deliver a richer and better formatted email to the recipient if you include HTML. However, it doesn't have to be difficult to use at a basic level either. We recommend ticking this option and instead of relying on line breaks with the return key, simply type <br> - and that's all there is to it.


For example


Hello<br><br>Thanks for your email.<br><br>I'll be out of the office until Tuesday PM<br><br>Kind Regards,<br>Christopher Neal


This will appear to the recipient as:


Hello


Thanks for your email.


I'll be out of the office until Tuesday PM


Kind Regards,

Christopher Neal


Note: If you're not confident using this basic method then you can still send emails that don't include HTML and they will still be delivered without any problems, they'll just look very basic at the other end.


Start - The autoresponder can be engaged immediately, or you can set a specific start time


Stop - You can set a specific end time for your autoresponder, or you can have it run indefinitely until you turn it off manually.


That's all there is to it. We hope you've found this tutorial useful. If you're a Twist customer and you want more help, don't forget that you can contact us any time by phone or raising a support ticket within this Knowledge Base.