OltranoMailboxes and aliases
Most people buy too many mailboxes because nobody explained aliases to them. Here is the difference, in one page.
The four things
| Mailbox | A real inbox with a password and storage. Somebody logs into it. This is what you pay for. |
|---|---|
| Alias | Another address that lands in an existing mailbox. Free, and as many as you like. |
| Group | One address that delivers to several mailboxes. Free. |
| Catch-all | Everything addressed to the domain that matches nothing else goes to one mailbox. |
So info@, sales@ and billing@ arriving in one person's
inbox is three aliases and one mailbox, not four mailboxes. And you can still
send as any of them.
Sending from an alias
A mailbox can send from any address that reaches it, with its own display name and its own
signature. That is how one person runs contact@ and invoices@ without
two passwords and two inboxes — and without signing an invoice email with the support
signature.
You can only send from addresses that are genuinely yours. If it were otherwise, anyone could send as anyone from our servers, and the domain would be on blocklists inside a week.
Catch-all, carefully
Useful while you migrate, because it stops anything being lost. Bad as a permanent setting, because spam to invented addresses lands in it. Our advice: switch it on during the move, read what arrives, turn the real addresses into aliases, then switch it off.
Shared mailboxes
An address several people work from — support@ as a real mailbox rather than a
group. See shared mailboxes, which also covers who is
allowed to open whose mail and what gets written in the audit log.
Sending limits
Every mailbox has a daily sending limit from the first day. This is not distrust — it is the only thing that stops one compromised password turning your domain's reputation into a smoking hole over a weekend.
Questions people actually ask
Do aliases cost anything?
No. Aliases, groups and forwarding are free and unlimited. You pay for mailboxes, because those are the ones using storage and holding a login.
Can two people share one mailbox?
Yes, as a shared mailbox with delegated access, which is better than sharing a password: each person signs in as themselves and the access is logged.
What happens to mail for an address that does not exist?
It is rejected at the door with a clear reason, unless you have a catch-all, in which case it lands there. Rejecting is better than accepting and bouncing later.
Next
- Set up email on your own domainThe DNS records, what each one does, and the one-click path.
- Shared mailboxes and who may open whose mailOne address, several people — and an audit trail for the awkward case.
- An email signature with your logo, done properlyFields or free text, a logo that is not an attachment, and both formats.