Email to CGI

All FastVirtual web hosting plans include email to CGI support.

The email to CGI option enables users to receive email via a CGI script. This option permits advanced users to completely customize the handling of incoming mail. Email is sent to the specified script using the POST method.

Email to CGI options are easily added and configured from the "Email" area of your account control panel.

Email to CGI Explained

The email to CGI gateway automatically converts email to a CGI-recognizable format, and forwards the converted email message to the script you specify.

This appears exactly as a normal email address to the sender, but all mail received by the email to CGI gateway is immediately converted and sent to the specified script. This can be any CGI script that resides on your domain.

Email to CGI options are often used in conjunction with personalized autoresponders, or to create advanced email management systems. For example, a company might use an email to CGI option as follows:

Email to CGI Address		Forwarded to
sales@yourname.com		http://www.yourname.com/cgi-bin/email_handler.cgi

In this example, sales enquiries would be automatically sent to email_handler.cgi. This script could produce an email auto-response with customized information from the sender's message, or could post to a customized email management system that assigns a unique tracking number to the message.