What’s the difference between email forwarding, an alias, and domain forwarding?
- Email forwarding: An email forwarder allows you to send emails from one address to another or even to multiple addresses. Forwarding is an additional feature for a fully operational mailbox rather than being its primary function.
- Email Alias: An alias is an email address that forwards messages to another address as its primary function, but it is not an actual mailbox (it cannot send emails or store messages).
- Domain forwarding: Domain forwarding forwards all of the domain’s email addresses to another domain. While you could set up a forwarder for each mailbox individually, forwarding everything at once is more efficient. The most common use case for this is when a domain changes.
Why would I want a forwarder or alias?
- Nicknames: Use forwarders to set up alias accounts. For example, if your name is Robert but most people call you Bob, you can create a mailbox for robert@example.com and an alias for bob@example.com. This way, you can use both mailbox names, but you only need to manage one mailbox. Or, if your community knows you by a nickname. For example, I grew up with several people everyone called Buddy. I found out later in life that none of them were actually named Buddy. You can create an email with your actual name and then set up an alias for your nickname.
- Changed Names: An alias can also be used if you change your name, for example, due to marriage.
- Team Emails: You might also set up an alias for team emails. For example, if you have a team of salespeople who all have their own individual email addresses, you can create an alias called sales@example.com and set it to forward to each team member’s inbox. This is also very useful for internal emails and memos. Instead of filling up the ‘To’ field of your email with all of your staff’s email addresses, you can create a forwarder called ‘staff’. Next time you need to send an email to the entire staff, send it to staff@example.com, and everyone will receive a copy.
- Email Duplication: If you have a mailbox that receives important emails, you can set it up to forward a copy of the email to another archive account or even several accounts. Remember, if you can set up a forwarder for an existing mailbox, both targets will receive the email.
- Email Masking: Another good use of forwarding is to hide your personal mailbox from public view. For example, you can create a forwarder that will forward sales@example.com to bob@example.com. This way, you can have the sales account on your website without putting your personal account in public view.
- Former Employees: If you have an employee who is no longer with your team, you will most likely want to close their email account. But what if they still have customers using their email as a contact? You would lose that business. No worries. You can close the account as normal, but set up a forwarder for the account so that any mail sent to the old account will be forwarded to the person taking over the role.
What Forwarders and Aliases Can’t Do
While forwarding is great for moving mail from one account to another, it does have some limitations.
- Mailing Lists: Although it is possible to use forwarders for bulk mailing lists, this approach is not very efficient. Luckily, the Mailing List app is perfect for this use case.
- Email Sorting: Email forwarders only push the emails from one account to another, without any filtering or sorting. If you're looking for a method to sort emails, consider Plus Addressing.