This post goes out to all GMail (Google Mail) account holders out there! Email aliases are provided unlimited, by default, with your Google Mail account! And they are free!

Yahoo! Mail Plus story

If you have been surfing the Internet for a few years you definitely remember the 6 Mb email quota allocated to each Yahoo! user not very long time ago. And even before that there was free POP3 access to all your Yahoo Inbox. Both features have gone away: one in the best interest of the masses (Yahoo! Mail now provides unlimited storage) and the other one turned to the Dark side (March, 2002) and is currently available to US residents only with the Yahoo! Mail Plus service.

Yahoo! Mail Plus debut (November, 2002)Â announced features that could be found on other email hosts (increased storage space, send and receive larger emails, POP3, SMTP) but it soon featured something that I think is quite ingenious, but I do not know how many actually use: the option to create disposable email addresses to use when you don’t want to give out your primary address. This means that you could use a few ‘virtual addresses’ along with your primary Yahoo! address and get rid of them whenever you feel you have too much spam coming through that channel.

These email addresses are created by adding a custom string right after your Yahoo! id and a plus sign (“+”): myyahooid+spamtrap@yahoo.com.

GMail aliases

The same functionality is provided by GMail, for free ;), and it allows you to receive emails at an unlimited number of aliases that are linked directly to your GMail account, as long as you format the address using the following two rules:

  • add a plus sign (“+”) and a custom string after your GMail id: mygmailid+yourspam@gmail.com (GMail Help Center - Using an address alias)
  • add a dot/period (“.”) anywhere in your GMail id: my.gmail.id@gmail.com (GMail Help Center - Changing your username)

Both emails in the example will deliver messages to mygmailid@gmail.com.

A more relevant example: name.surname@gmail.com is exactly the same address when talking to a GMail server as namesurname@gmail.com or n.a.m.e.s.u.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com.

gmail.com or googlemail.com?

One more feature in your pocket, that comes bundled with your GMail account as well: you can receive email at both domains! mygmailid@googlemail.com is delivered to the same account as mygmailid@gmail.com.

So what’s the use of GMail aliases?

Custom filters add a huge flavor to the email experience with a GMail account: although there is no difference while receiving email sent to any of the address variations described above (all email gets delivered to the same inbox on one account) the GMail user interface can process email sent to custom addresses and enables you to set rules and filter email and according to where email is sent to.
Most obvious usage: fighting spam.

Personal experience

I have been using these features for two years now to sort emails delivered from my aliases at other domains and I am satisfied with the experience.

One bad experience worth mentioning: ROTLD, the Romanian Top Level Domain Registrar is unable to process email send to/from GMail aliases that use the extended address format (mygmailid+rotld@gmail.com)… Hope they fix it soon as WHOIS spam is getting worse…