Catch-All Email: Why It Hurts Deliverability (and What to Do Instead)

Catch-all inboxes accept mail to any random address at your domain. Spammers abuse them, inflating bounce rates and polluting reputation. Modern deliverability best practice is explicit mailboxes or plus addressing.

Better patterns

• Create mailboxes only for real roles and people
• Use plus tags (support+client@) if your host supports them
• Reject unknown recipients at SMTP to surface typos quickly
• Monitor DMARC reports for spoofing attempts

Want to see how your own domain is set up? Use the free DMARC checker: it runs in your browser and stores nothing.