I was asked this question today by one of my clients and thought it interesting enough to post because its asked often enough.

“I’m trying to understand the difference, in the email system, between the vacation message and the auto-responder. Is there any other significant difference between the 2 systems?”

There is and I will explain.

Auto Responder
The auto responder function when enabled, will automatically send a response back to the sender containing the message you have created. This could be something like “Hi, we have received your message and will get back to you shortly”.

If the same sender sends another email to the same address, the auto response system will kick in and send the message to the sender again.

Vacation Message
Like the auto responder system, the vacation message system will send an auto response to the sender, but will only send the message ONCE.

So basically they perform the same function but with the difference that the vacation message sends only one autoresponse.

So which one should you use?
Well for me, I never use either because auto responders and vacation messages add to the mountains of spam available on the internet.

Imagine, a spammer sends you an email, and you automatically send back a message saying “hi, my email exists so sell it to your spam friends”.

However, if you really must use one, then I would recommend a vacation message because the sender will only receive it once.

There is nothing worse than sending a mail to a person on a regular basis only to receive another one back, quite annoying indeed!