SimpleLogin.io - An Email Service I Never Thought I Needed... Until Now

I have multiple email addresses spanning across a handful of domains. For the majority of them, email accounts need to be set up for each one of these domains. After a while, the costs start to add up, especially when some of these email accounts receive only a few emails. In addition, daily checking of emails across separate accounts can be somewhat a little painful.

Normally, I would use a feature in my personal Gmail account that allows me to not only check emails from other email accounts but also respond to received emails in one place. But there are a couple of limitations, such as there is the number of external email addresses that can be added and the frequency to which these accounts are checked for new messages.

Enter Email Aliases

What would most suit my needs is an email alias service that will provide a single admin area to create all the email addresses for any of my registered domains. Aliases allow you to send and receive emails to an inbox of your choosing. So I could store all my emails within my Gmail account and make better use of the storage allowance.

Simplelogin.io is the service which does just that. I’ve been trialling the Premium tier for a week, allowing me to add aliases to multiple custom domains and (the handiest feature) reply to emails sent to the alias. Setup is relatively swift consisting of some domain-level DNS updates and creating a mailbox for emails to be forwarded to.

By connecting my Gmail account as a mailbox for SimpleLogin to forward emails, sending and receiving emails feels really native. I now have a central area to check emails within my Google account whilst also adding an additional layer of security.

I am always wary of sharing my Gmail email address as Google houses a lot of my private information - Photos, Email and Drive documents/files. I prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to anything relating to my Google account.

For my everyday use, I decided to set up the following aliases against a newly registered personal domain based on the different types of websites I use:

• shopping@
• technical@
• social@
• random@

If for any reason any one of my email aliases gets compromised due to a data breach or excessive spam, I can quite easily remove the offending alias. SimpleLogin.io also provides the option to generate temporary email aliases if needed - useful for times when you need to sign-up just to get some free promotion without disclosing one of your core email addresses.

Going through this process will hopefully give me a chance to finally phase out my very old "ntlworld.com" related ISP email accounts - something I've been meaning to do for a very long time. I find it quite amazing my old ISP email accounts are still in service, which were originally set up when my Dad first connected our family household to the sweet sweet taste of mega-fast broadband back in the early 2000s.

Other Options

At one point, I considered hosting my mail server using my ever-useful Synology NAS to save costs in purchasing further email hosting. This idea was quashed relatively quickly as I just don't trust the uptime of my ISP or my home networking setup - though might be a suitable option for those who do.

Conclusion

Adopting email aliases has allowed me to rethink and re-organise how I want my emails to be used on a day-to-day basis. When you take into consideration the overall cost, security and privacy benefits, it's the email service I never knew I needed until now.