Ask HN: How many email addresses do you actively use? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How many email addresses do you actively use?

21 pointschdaniel89 comments

I'm addressing this question especially to those who have multiple businesses online.

Also, how do you access them?

Hundreds. Having my own domains with all email coming to me lets me give arbitrary (i.e., numbered) addresses when requested, so I can track them when I want, and for example see which ones later to auto-delete, etc. Or for whatever need arises.

Edit: my recollection from some time ago is that pobox.com was useful for the same thing, if one doesn't have one's own domain. I used them before I got mine. There are probably similar services. I liked their attitude and approach, at the time. (no other affiliation.)

Edit again: the above plus some rules in mutt (or thunderbird maybe...), have been really helpful for me. The rules & macros could get rather complex if one wanted I suppose.

(Edit: I've liked pair.com for domain/hosting for a long time: have had good prices/service, helpfulness, no silliness for many years; also no other affiliation but customer.)

(Edit: that email system at my hosting provider also works well for, say, groups like various extended family subsets, so it works something like a mailing list to everyone.)

Edit (sorry, I didn't answer the OPs 2nd question): For most, I use mutt (or thunderbird) to POP (download) them from my hosting provider to my own pc (so, not a business...sorry if not helping), and then do good backups. For some, as mentioned in my previous paragraph, they are auto-forwarded by the hosting provider to whomever, per rules I put in their web UI for my account. It is also possible to create many extra mailboxes (which I used to do ) so other individuals can POP (or view with IMAP) their own email to their own pc. For a business...would have to think whether we need a centralized Exchange-equivalent or if storage on multiple PCs, or IMAP (leave it on the hosting provider's server, but manage from a PC, etc) is OK in a limited situation, given the backups, storage, and specific business needs. I would probably not prefer gmail since Google already has enough centralized power (as discussed in other HN postings about Chrome vs. firefox etc).

Sounds exhausting and a bit of a pain for people who correspond with you. What's the point?

I'm not sure how so. I just give someone an email address (x122@example.com) and they just use it, and everything to "example.com" (or, my domain in practice) always comes to me. I've never yet had to tell a person (other than some online automated system (edit: rarely there but happened and i was glad I could)) to change the address they use for me. Works well especially when businesses require one. Then if they spam me too much later, I just can auto-delete email to that address at either my email client or using the web tools of pair.com who hosts the domain. But, did I misunderstand you?

In many cases an email address is used as a primary ID. Blog comments, gravatar images, and many social apps are this way. When you intro one contact to another, which email address do you use?

Even for businesses it can be a pain. Fortunately, few of my own customers follow your protocol, but I've had a couple of very paranoid German users who signed up for my service under a numbered email address and then later emailed me from another address asking for help... and I had no idea who they were or ability to help them.

If your concern is just spam, it's trivial to block an offending address. Why do you need to fracture your address? It seems like you're creating a massive headache both for yourself and for those who want to deal with you.

For a point of reference, I've been pretty active on the web since its early days and at least after PG's "Plan for spam" essay, I've never had a serious issue. The worst problem has been somebody who has the same name as me and a similar email address. His elderly friends consistently email me by accident trying to reach him. Other than that, it's been fine. Recruiters have been mildly annoying, but even they don't send more than a couple of emails per week.

For some, I automatically change my "from" address using a rule in mutt, that change it based on the recipient. One could keep a list there I guess.

For social media etc., it hasn't come up for me, but for those or multi-contacts sharing it, I would have to choose a shared email I guess, or use a main "business" one. (I don't personally use FB, or those sites that have you log in using contact from another site. Fortunately my activities have been able to work around those.)

I do keep a log in my personal organizer of what # comes next, and what address I have used w/ whom (with my notes for each org I talk to, alonside the contact names, physical address, conversation logs in case I need to quote who said what when, etc). Then I try to use the same email address w/ them when I reply (a few keystrokes I learned, in mutt; this has not been often enough to be a pain, so far, but I can see how it could grow to a nuisance if I were doing that all day long). Maybe one could extract the email addresses from that list and use a bulk email every 3 years to say "here is my new address" or something, if that address started getting too much spam. I haven't done that to know if it is practical from a social standpoint: maybe not.

Arguably at some level, it could be all more trouble than it is worth. It's become habit for me now. I guess I get annoyed when someone requires my email then abuses it, or I start getting spam of a type that I know their PC was compromised. At least once I got some really offensive spam from an address I had used only at an online site whose services I appreciated, but whose IT I couldn't trust much, because they claimed they had notified all customers who were compromised in a reported breach, but they never notified me. That knowledge might not have benefited me enough to justify all this work, but I was really glad to block that email address in future. Once I skipped my usual careful process and instantly regretted it (fortunately that spam has since petered out). Or, I can now auto-delete emails from public mailing lists I haven't used in many years but spammers still do.

I also have one "throwaway" address I re-use for all businesses where I don't care if we lose track of each other, and I can change it later if needed. That might be the sweet spot for some.

edit: Having my own domains lets me do it however I want, and change over time.

This is fascinating. Thanks for all the details you've shared!

I'm definitely pretty low key about this kind of thing and it's interesting to see how others think.

Thanks and you're welcome. I put many things I think a lot about (not email stuff but things really important to me...) at my web site (in my profile).

(ps: if anyone looks at my site: it is intermittently slow for me lately and the hosting support can't reproduce it. If you see that slowness, and want to say what region you are from (perhaps emailing me using contact info on the site's page footers, won't put you on a list), that might provide diagnostic input. No big deal but thanks if so.)

You said: "If your concern is just spam, it's trivial to block an offending address. Why do you need to fracture your address? It seems like you're creating a massive headache both for yourself and for those who want to deal with you."

...and the reason is spammers keep changing (or faking) their "from" information. Also, maybe I should look up that "Plan for Spam" essay you mentioned.

(Now I'm wondering about making a mutt rule that always replies "from" the address to which others sent me a message. If it works, that would reduce effort more. Maybe later.)

edit: corrections

Wow, that's interesting. If you change your device (phone/tablet/desktop/laptop), do you have to set them all up again? Set them all up = log in, sync signatures, display name etc.

How do you access these email addresses anyways? I think it's safe to assume you're not paying a G Suite subscription for each of them...

You can have a catch all in gmail that goes to your main mailbox. I do the same thing - every company and site gets a unique email so I know who has violated GDPR easily ;-)

This. Been doing it for years. I have some other personal accounts and business accounts too but I aggressively track who is leaking/selling/sharing data and blacklist them.

Maybe what we are doing is similar in concept. I haven't been using gmail primarily, since they have so much power already and history suggests (to me at least) not to centralize too much, anywhere, as a matter of trust. (A breach there could be big indeed.)

Indeed - I have considered switching away from Google for these reasons but cannot find a provider I like more, and do not want to run infrastructure like this personally.

Two killer features are:

1: catch all (office 365 did not have this when I switched away from them in 2014) 2: automatic categorisation which no one else seems to have.

If anyone knows a provider that has these I’d be most interested in hearing about them!

Thanks. (I'll try not to get arrogant, now that something I said was interesting.. ;)

I actually don't access my email from my phone, but the hosting provider (again, pair.com) has a web UI for accessing email (very roughly comparable to gmail) so I certainly could log on there, or could install an IMAP email client on my phone to browse the email until it gets POPped off the host when I am back at the laptop.

When switching laptops, I would restore my local email from a backup (I guess I'm willing to lose a day or three, and try to remember what was important), or rsync the email files back from my fallback/old laptop. I have a somewhat regular routine to upload those files to my pair.com shell account storage (tar, gz, gpg encrypted, then scp, and sometimes to my free google storage and/or AWS glacier), as well as rsyncing key files with a script (which has grown over time to become a full restore for all the accounts I use on my computer) to the old/fallback laptop, and semi-periodic full backups (carefully selected then tar/gz/gpg encrypted) of files that matter, to optical off-site media (not enough volume for tape quite yet I guess).

I tried to answer the access question better in another edit to my original comment above.... Let me know if not.

Haha, no worry, nothing sounded arrogant.

Instead of doing all that stuff and getting your hands dirty with AWS and .tar .gz etc., would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access to all your email addresses?

Not in an unified inbox, but have them as separates. Say cmd+1 is quickly switching to address #1, cmd +2 is switching to address #2 and so on...

When you'd be switching devices, you'd just log in once and get access to all of them.

Would you use that?

It (edit: my system) wouldn't do it that with a single login probably, unless it was a stored password on the PC for each mutt instance and data directory doing its connection to the provider.

Otherwise (with multi-logins), I could do that with my provider's email web UI in browser tabs (or save the logins in the browser, which I generally do not), for all the ones I designate to them as separate mailboxes (they have some number included, then you pay more after that), or could have a mutt script+window to switch to a different mutt data directory for each.

But I have the other backup stuff largely automated now, so I don't mind much. (Plus it makes me feel good to run scripts I wrote & tested carefully, on my PC.) There would certainly be simpler ways. Maybe I'll reconsider someday if I want to change. :) (Edit: for my own data, I avoid SaaS generally, as I like a sense of control. Same reason I guess that I go to the trouble to learn/use OpenBSD.)

I use an open-source helpdesk system to manage business emails. Works like a charm - lets you assign deadlines, priorities, categories, have canned replies, sorting rules, leave internal comments, search previous replies, etc. It's also super-convenient to have 1 interface to multiple emails & signatures (support/sales/per-product addresses) and I would recommend setting one up once you hit 5-10 incoming emails per week.

Aside from that, I have 1 personal address on my main business domain, the name@surname.com (redirects to the 1st one) and a @gmail.com one for people with overzealous spam filters.

Wow that is such an interesting idea to me. one of those “that was obvious why didn’t I think of that” type reactions.

What help-desk system is your favorite?

If you say open-source I believe it's safe to assume it's a fully free helpdesk system, right?

So do you access this system through the browser? If you change the device, there's no initial time investment to set all these up, right?

Three:

1. My work email

2. My "personal" email, with a silly-sounding address (see my username).

3. A professional-sounding, but non-work-affiliated email (firstname.lastname@gmail.com)

I would love to combine 2 and 3. Unfortunately, I came up with my email/username when I was 12 and didn't know any better, and I don't want it seen in professional correspondence.

I add all three to Apple Mail on my various devices, and access them from a unified inbox. The exception is my work computer (an iMac), where I could add my personal accounts but have chosen not to.

You're the perfect person I can asked an "advanced" question since you're using a unified inbox.

Would you see an improvement in having a web-based mail client where, with one login, you can access and quickly switch between all these addresses' inboxes?

Yes it would be an improvement, but I use web-based email so rarely I don't know if I'd bother setting up such a thing.

The only time I use web-based email is when I'm on a public computer and need a very specific message. When that happens, I know intuitively which account it's in.

Oh? I assumed web-based email is superior to a client installed on your machine since it's... in the cloud as opposed to local.

I can see you're not thinking of it that way. What's your underlying thought on web-based email vs local client?

Not OP, but I'm in a similar situation, so I though I'd share my insight, in case you're interested.

I prefer a desktop client because it's more lightweight than a web browser, I can keep it running indefinitely, I don't have to worry about accidentaly closing it and not receiving notifications afterwards. I can also have a dedicated icon in the tray that shows the number of new messages.

progressive web app it is then! thanks for the comment, definitely helpful since I'm stuck in my ways with love for running everything through Chrome

At least on Mac, I will always choose a native Cocoa app over a web-based one. Coca apps launch and run faster, are visually cohesive with my OS, and (usually) support Apple Events so I can plug them into Automator.

And honestly, it's just as "in the cloud" as a web based app would be. All my email is synced to my computer from my various email accounts, and that sync is solid and quick enough that I never think about it. I can log into a new computer and add my accounts, and all my email will be there.

I prefer Electron-based apps to Cocoa apps because my vision is substandard and the Electron-based app I know the best (VSCode) allows me to change the size of all the elements in the window. I have reason to believe other Electron apps will allow the same thing. (Although most Cocoa editors allow me to change the size of the text in the main pane, they do not allow me to change the size of any of the other text or other elements.)

I don't have a retina Mac, but I have experimented with a 27-inch iMac in a store: System Preferences > Displays offers a choice of 5 different screen resolutions, but all of them except for the native resolution are IME blurry compared to an Electron app or Chrome (which allows me to change the size of all the elements in the viewport). My vision is not so bad that I don't notice the blurriness even on a retina display.

Graphical Emacs is the only app I know of that uses native Cocoa APIs that allows the user to change the size of most of the apps's elements. (It does not allow changes to the size of scroll bars and elements inside pop-up menus, the title bar and the menu bar, but those things don't bother me.)

I don't think that functionality is too common among Electron apps? You can't increase the size in Bitwarden, for example.

I'm surprised you found the options in System → Displays too blurry. How long ago was this? Modern macs have such high screen resolutions that the slightly uneven scaling shouldn't be a problem. Indeed, on many new Macs the default resolution is not evenly divisible by the screen resolution.

On your non-retina Mac, you could use QuickRes to force "retina" resolutions.

You ask how long ago I experimented with the retina iMac. 2 months ago. non-native resolutions didnt look horrible, just not as good as native -- and even at native res, the text on Mac is not as nice / sharp as the text on Windows. and Im not the only comment writer on this site who prefers Windows text rendering even on retina displays.

I like http://displaymenu.milchimgemuesefach.de/index.html as a means of getting a full range of specific XxY resolutions for macOS (rather than the xs, s, m, l, xl approach in System Preferences).

I (nearly) always use a local app for my email too -- the UX is just so much better.

So far as being in the Cloud goes, all the email is kept in IMAP folders "in the Cloud", I just have a local cache in the Mail app.

I agree that all web-based mail clients are pretty low. Gmail/Outlook/other clearly-developed alternatives are good, but they also have native counterparts

Given a high-quality (good UX, etc.) web-based client would be available, would you consider switching?

I'll always consider other solutions, but ...

A native application has advantages over a web site, a web app, or a "native" app built using Electron, etc:

* in resource usage,

* in UX consistency,

* in integration with the rest of the system, eg. for scripting (Apple Script), accessibility, etc

* in working with locally-cached emails while offline or with degraded connectivity,

* in having no ongoing cost,

* in being vendor independent,

* in supporting the use of standard protocols (SMTP / IMAP), rather than a proprietary web backend API

and there's probably more I could come up with if I thought about it some more.

A web application (not an Electron app) has one primary advantage: it can easily access significantly more computational and storage resources than my laptop can. That could be an advantage for searching. There's probably other advantages I could think of with more time here too.

So, while I'd be happy to consider a web-based solution, I think it's fair to say that I think the deck is stacked against such a product, for my purposes.

Work, personal Gmail, and more recently a personal burner domain that has hundreds.

The burner domain is great for random website signups. Anything serious is done via Gmail (with two factor), but for the burner domain I use a unique address for every site that needs a sign-up (so if whatever.com needs a sign up then I use whatever@burner, other.org becomes other@burner etc etc - all addresses are directed to one inbox via a catchall) but typically the same password.

So I remember one password instead of one email address, and the address I can work out from the domain. Not exactly secure, but at least slightly resistant to leaked email lists if a site gets hacked (since every site has a unique address and common password, rather than common address and password). I am working on the assumption that people are just automatically trying leaked user-passwd pairs and won't "crack" my system... but if they do no harm done since anything important is on Gmail (I generally trust Google to not get hacked, for better or worse) and I can start again with another burner domain. For important passwords I of course use decent passwords and a password manager, but life is too short for that with websites you might only use once or twice a year and you don't really care about.

I use Zoho for the burner domain. Cheap and reliable. I tried fastmail, proton mail, and tutonova but I preferred zoho's web interface, app, and price (for the features I needed)

Would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access all three addresses?

Not in a unified inbox, but have them as separates. Say the "cmd+1" keyboard shortcut is instantly switching to address #1, cmd +2 is switching to address #2 and so on...

No that sounds like something I'd really want to avoid.

Partly for security, but mostly just for segmentation of my brain/attention span. The different emails are all for different purposes and are never really used at the same time or same context.

Plus also I don't have a Mac so no CMD key. If you are building a product, please don't do a mac-only release. Lots of developers don't use Macs despite what people seem to think

"If you are building a product, please don't do a mac-only release"

See, that's why it would be web-based, to not tie it down to any OS. I'm held tight in the Apple ecosystem and I'm actively looking for web-based solutions as opposed to local ones just on the off-chance I might want to make the jump one day to something else

I have one personal domain at Fastmail that I use nearly always, but it’s a .me domain and I’ve ran into weird issues with certain services thinking it’s a fake email address or just general unexplained delivery issues over the years, so I fall back to a fastmail.com address in those cases. I also have iCloud and GMail addresses I rarely ever use.

I forward everything into Fastmail and use their web interface and mobile apps.

I have a work address I keep entirely separate.

ditto on fastmail and .me. Also hate the did you mean me@domain.de?

If you switch devices, do you just login with Fastmail once and everything is synced? Or do you have to sync details such as display name+signatures again?

Don't have any business use, so not sure if this is of any interest to you.

1. Personal domain, currently hosted with Office 365 but I will probably move after the year is up.

2. Student email (.edu, G Suite). Used for all school business, school-related apps, and some things I haven't bothered to move to #1 yet.

3. Gmail account for spammy/annoying websites and signups.

4. Gmail account used for public records/FOIA requests, nothing else.

5. iCloud account (basically used for nothing except iTunes receipts).

6. ProtonMail account--used for my VPN accounts only.

On my Mac mini and iPhone, I use Apple Mail with 1, 2, and 5 added. On my Windows laptop, I access 1 and 2 through webmail (I have Outlook installed for 1 but rarely use it). Anything else, I just sign in to webmail as needed. I also have access to a few team/shared Gmail/G Suite accounts, I don't have these added to Mail b/c I don't want their unread statuses messing up my unread badges.

Only 1/2 are generally used for IRL stuff or accounts that I care about. I follow inbox zero and turn off email notifications for all but the most important stuff (ex security alerts, receipts, eBay auction results) and email analogs (ex. Canvas messages).

You've given me a lot of info (thanks for that) so I can ask you a question that would usually come "down the line".

Especially since you're cross-platform (mac mini, windows, iphone), would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access all these 6? Not in an unified inbox, but have them as separate.

Essentially Apple Mail Client but in the browser.

I use between 4 & 6 primary email "blocks" with each using several hundred aliases. I keep access to most, but not all of these blocks in Thunderbird on my two laptops. One of the email accounts I only access from a dedicated device while VPN'd. I fetch mail over POP3, wiping the server data, and then move the files to an airgapped machine to read. I have a Protonmail & Tutonota account which I connect to via their apps or websites. I also maintain several small public access servers which handle mail. I use Alpine for that, or Mutt in a pinch.

Friends get one email address from one domain. Work gets aliases from a second domain. Businesses get an alias from a third domain. These are either whitelisted domains where any address will get to me, or I can create the alias on the fly in the moment. I like to know not only if a mailbox is getting spam so I can block the alias, but also so I can stop doing business with companies that sell my data (looking at you, Bank of America).

Is it overkill? Oh yeah, big-time.

Many, I split topics logically over multiple gmail addresses which allowed me to isolate spam. I’ve also used throwaway sims for things like gumtree.com.au - there was a bunch of phone spam that hit the burner number so I’m glad I did that one.

Now I use two dedicated domains with catchalls which seem to work everywhere but gmail which should allow me to attribute and blackhole spam much more effectively. I really wish large providers (o365, aws) would provide low volume accounts for cheaper - having my company sales or procurements associated with my personal company email is silly, but the alternative is $4/month/account which really adds up but running your own mail server has it’s own time costs.

So how many do email addresses would you need to access if, say, you're on a vacation and you're using the hotel iMacs (or whatever desktops they have there).

When you get a new phone/laptop/work computer/etc, do you set up all these 2/3/4 email addresses you actually use, making sure the display names and signatures are synced?

> hotel iMacs I would never authenticate to an account I care about from a host I don’t trust.

> new laptop

Copy my .thunderbird and offlineimap user profiles to my new host

> Copy my .thunderbird and offlineimap user profiles to my new host

Would you be paying for a web-based email client for all your email accounts, in order to avoid this transfer?

No online businesses.

1) work email (access from the office or through blackberry work, ugh)

2) personal (that’s actually two addresses on similar domains, but I only actually send from one) — google hosted, read through iOS mail or mail.app or win10 mail or web interface

3) a more professionally-sounding personal, which I don’t use much, forwarded to 2)

4) spam hole for random website registrations, read through web interface when I need to confirm an email for some business’ enjoyment

5) one for newsletters, which I convert to a feed to read in miniflux

I guess I also have a Microsoft account from my office 365 subscription, but I never actually opened it.

Thanks for clarifying everything — because of the info you've given me, I can ask you a question that would usually come after some back-and-forth:

Would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access the relevant ones? Not in an unified inbox, but have them as separates.

Say you add all of them but disable notifications on address #4 and set notification rules for #5.

As a consequence, you wouldn't need to forward #3 to #2.

Gmail already allows to easily switch between accounts.

Are you using Gmail?

I did try that personally but the fact that it was POP3 and not IMAP put me off... I believe they do that because they sell G Suite and you'd have to get that if you'd want IMAP and easy-switch

I have the old free g suite.

You mention keyboard shortcuts. That’s trivial to replicate with Firefox’ MAC with any web interface.

Web clients are not important.

I tried to limit as much as possible switching between email addresses.

Because of there is no central authority to bind an email to a person, you cannot really ever delete an address.

I used to have a gmail address, and then I switched to a custom domain + email provider when I started to want some emancipation from Google. My gmail address still exists but redirects emails to my new address. I refrained from creating aliases to that address for the very reason that I wouldn’t be able to delete them.

When you say email provider, is that an Exchange account? Or just roundcube/free thing from your custom domain?

What do you use to read/send emails? And did I get it right that you only have two now i.e. custom domain and the gmail one?

Yes I have two addresses, the custom (actively used) and the gmail (legacy, forwards everything to my custom).

I registered my domain at Gandi.net, which offers access to their smtp and imap servers when you do so. They are my provider atm, but since I own the domain I could switch to self hosting anytime.

What do you do if you get a new device? Is it painful to set these things up across your devices? They'd need to have the same signature, display name etc.

1 professional (Fastmail, own domain) 1 personal (POBox alias, forwarding to iCloud) 1 employer-provided (Google Business) 1 GMail (er ... GMail) 1 iCloud (not publicly used, but collects from POBox) 1 Yahoo (still!)

I use all accounts from Mail on my iPhone; all except my employer's account via Mail.app on my MBP; and my employer's GMail via the GMail web on my work laptop.

I use +-suffixes extensively for signups, etc, so I can blackhole spam when my address gets leaked ...

When you're on a computer, do you access all these individually from the browser?

If you'd switch your phone, does the need to sync the display names and signatures bother you? That, and the need to log in manually to all these 6 addresses?

On my laptop, I use Apple's Mail.app, rather than a browser.

When I switch to my phone, also using the iOS Mail application, it's all synced up.

I seldom need to log in: the Mail apps use my keychain to sign me in to all the accounts transparently.

I have at least one signature for each account, and several for some. When sending a new email, I select the correct source address (two taps/clicks), and signature (another two clicks) if the default isn't correct.

Replies set the account automatically, so I just need to choose the signature there.

When I get a new phone, my email (and calendar, and contacts) settings migrate seamlessly. I've upgraded 3 times over the last decode (iPhone3GS, iPhone5S, iPhone6S) with no issues.

Same with a new laptop (4 times in about 15 years) -- I just transfer all the settings over, and I haven't ever needed to redo anything.

Roughly four.

The 'personal' email address (although I have some work-related emails on it) which is on Gmail, so I have push notifications on my phone. I also use webmail.

The work address from the institution I'm currently at and the address from the one where I'm currently on leave. These I check daily (or four times a day if I'm bored) on their webmail interfaces.

The old personal address (also on Gmail) which I've discontinued in 2014. This I check once a week.

I've got several - one gmail (aka the "refuse collection" that I use mostly for email registrations for website I suspect will send me more email I care for), one protonmail I use as a backup business email where I'm the customer, plus my main personal email address a handful for side projects that I all run via an email server I host myself on a VPS.

Oh, and a work email address.

Would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access all three addresses? Not in a unified inbox, but have them as separates. Say the "cmd+1" keyboard shortcut is instantly switching to address #1, cmd +2 is switching to address #2 and so on...

I use three emails.

I have my personal email, which is in gmail

I have my website email, which is in gmail for business

And I have my work email, which is also in gmail for business.

I add all three to my laptop and only the first two to my phone.

I use the + feature a lot, for example tendencydriven+github@workdomain.com - they still get arrive in my regular inbox but I can easily see who is sharing my email, and block certain ones if I start getting spam on them.

2 to 7.

One personal/work email on my own domain, one catchall on gmail, mostly for signing up to public services that will spam me (sadly their spam filter is much better than what I can run on my server).

5+ legacy email addys on various non-gmail free services, that i don't sign up with any more but have some of my old accounts.

So you're mainly using... 2 to 4 if I counted that right?

What do you do when you get a new device? Do you have to sync the signatures and display names again manually?

I regularly use only 2, so the others aren't configured in any email client, i just open the web interface when i (rarely) use them.

Fourteen, all on my own server. Each one is used with a different service or person that I communicate with. I access it with Heirloom-mailx; all of the messages go into the same mailbox file, and the /etc/aliases file is used to add or remove email addresses. This helps to avoid spam.

If you change devices or get a new device, do you need to set everything you've set up in Heirloom again? Or it's all synced?

If I get a new computer, I can simply copy the files, I think. (These are not only the mailbox file for Heirloom-mailx, but also the configuration files for Exim, and the /etc/aliases file, which would be copied.) (I don't use my email from multiple devices at the same time.)

Five. I use them all. Three are not tied to my identity and I use them for secure communications. The other two are for family and friends. Only one is a paid-for service and I've used that service for fourteen years, which permits unlimited ad-hoc addresses.

Would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access all 5 addresses?

Not in a unified inbox, but have them as separates. Say the "cmd+1" keyboard shortcut is instantly switching to address #1, cmd +2 is switching to address #2 and so on...

About 7. I require 3 for personal use (one main, 2 junk for accounts for websites that I don't care about but need an account), one school one, one for my scanners smtp scan to email function and the other 2 are just old ones.

Would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access all email addresses you care about? Not in an unified inbox, but have them as separates.

Say cmd+1 is quickly switching to address #1, cmd +2 is switching to address #2 and so on...

As a customer I use one email address per service, using a catch-all on my domain name. As a business, I have about 3 or 4 email addresses for each business and all of them are managed through a single fastmail.com account

If you get a new device, do you just login with your fastmail.com and everything is synced (display names, signatures etc) or do you need to set up these things again?

Three Emails:

- accounts@domain.tld - Catch All for emails for services (account/<service>@domain.tld)

- handle@domain.tld - Personal Email

- first@domain.tld - Work/Professional Email

Would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access all three addresses?

Not in a unified inbox, but have them as separates. Say the "cmd+1" keyboard shortcut is instantly switching to address #1, cmd +2 is switching to address #2 and so on...

@gmail.com, moving all those to personal domain; few catchalls@domains

When you switch devices, do you set these addresses all over again? How do you deal with syncing display names, signatures etc, if so?

1 work, 1 personal, 1 professional (for recruiters and domain stuff)

Would you use a web-based email client where, with one login, you can access all 3 addresses?

Not in an unified inbox, but have them as separates. Say the "cmd+1" keyboard shortcut is instantly switching to address #1, cmd +2 is switching to address #2 and so on...

Four (4)

- Work, run through the company's IT team

- Personal (via gmail)

- Private personal (custom domain)

- Volunteer group email

3: Work, personal, independent business

I see. How do you manage access them? Mail client or browser?

5 :

- 3 personal (of them 2 personal domains)

- 2 pro/project based

When you switch devices, do you set these addresses up all over again? How do you deal with syncing display names, signatures etc, if so?

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