Email aliases and your own domain, explained

What email aliases protect, how many Proton Mail, Tuta, and Posteo include, why your own domain lets you change providers and keep your address, and what to watch out for.

Key points

An alias is an extra address that delivers to your mailbox. Give each kind of service its own alias, and turn one off when it starts getting spam.
With your own domain, your address stays the same when you change providers. Proton Mail and Tuta offer this on paid plans; Posteo and Hushmail’s personal plans do not.
A domain costs money for as long as you use it. If you let it lapse, someone else can register it and receive mail sent to your addresses.

What an alias does

An alias is a second address for the same mailbox. Mail sent to it arrives with your other mail, and whoever knows only the alias does not know your main address.

Aliases help in three ways:

Less spam in your main address. Use one alias for shopping and one for newsletters.
You see who passed your address on. If spam arrives at an alias that you gave to one shop only, you know where it came from.
You can turn an alias off without changing your main address.

	Aliases or extra addresses
Posteo	3 included, up to 25 for 0.10 euros per alias a month
Proton Mail	Mail Plus: 10 addresses and 10 hide-my-email aliases
Tuta	Revolutionary: 15 extra addresses; none on the free plan

Your own domain

An address at your own domain ends in a name that you own instead of the provider’s name. If you change providers later, you take the domain with you: you change a few settings where you registered the domain, and the mail goes to the new provider. Your contacts and accounts keep the same address.

	Own domain
Hushmail	not on personal plans; on the Small Business, Healthcare, and Law plans
Posteo	no
Proton Mail	1 domain with Mail Plus
Tuta	3 domains with Revolutionary

Posteo does not offer own domains and gives its privacy model as the reason: “own domains need to be registered to the name and address of a person.”

What to watch out for

Renew the domain on time. If it lapses, anyone can register it and receive the mail sent to your addresses, including password reset links.
Do not delete an alias that you still use for an account. Without it, you no longer receive that account’s reset links.
Keep your main address for people you know and for your most important accounts.

What you can do

Create one alias for shopping and one for newsletters.
Change the address in those accounts to the alias.
If you want your own domain, register it, set it up with your provider’s instructions, and turn on automatic renewal.

Next step

How a VPN and private email work together is explained in the guide Beyond the VPN: private email with Proton Mail and Hushmail.