Email alias: How do email aliases add to my security and how do I use them?

Learn here how email aliases can immensely reduce spam issues and increase your security at the same time.

2020-12-28 / First published: 2019-9-16
An email alias is an additional email address that you can use for a special purpose. Tutanota lets you add five or more aliases in any of the paid versions. You can use these alias email addresses for receiving and sending secure emails. In this post, we have collected everything you need to know about email aliases, including a quick video on how to set up aliases in Tutanota.

What is an email alias?

An email alias is an additional email address that you can use for a special purpose. For instance, you can have different email addresses for private contacts, work related contacts, newsletter sign-ups, online registrations, and more.

A useful set of email aliases could look like this:

Email alias Purpose
firstname@tutanota.com Private contacts
firstname.lastname@tutanota.com Business contacts
mynewsletters@domain.com Newsletter registrations
myservices@domain.com Online registrations

Why do I need an email alias?

Email aliases help you manage your inbox, increase your security, and can reduce the amount of spam you are receiving.

How email aliases help you manage your inbox.

When setting up aliases, you can direct incoming emails to these aliases to separate folders. For example, you can add an inbox rule where the 'To recipient' is the alias newsletters@domain.com, which directs all emails to this alias to a specific folder, e.g. "Newsletter".

How email aliases can reduce spam.

When you start receiving lots of spam to your alias email address, you can simply deactivate the alias. Then no more emails are being received to this address. This can be particularly handy with the above example as some newsletter services share your email address with third parties, which then leads to a lot of spam emails.

When you are using Tutanota domain aliases, you can only deactivate them. When you are using custom domain aliases, you can delete them and create new ones. Thus, when using a custom domain, you can switch aliases as often as you like.

How email aliases can increase your security.

When using separate email addresses for separate purposes, it becomes harder for third parties to track you across the web. On top of that, you can remain anonymous when signing up for newsletters or on websites as you can use an alias address that does not contain your name.

What is the difference between an email alias and a user?

To quickly see the difference between an alias and a user, watch this video.

Tutanota Premium, Teams and Pro give you two options to add additional email addresses:

  • email aliases
  • users

Email aliases are additional email addresses only. Emails sent to this address go to your main Tutanota mailbox; there's no separate login to access the alias. You can also reply using your alias address from your main Tutanota mailbox.

Users are separate mailboxes with their own login. Adding users makes sense if you need mailboxes for multiple users, e.g. family members, employees, etc..

Your Tutanota account has email plus aliases, calendar and address book.

A paid Tutanota account consists of one email mailbox - plus email alias addresses - a calendar and an address book.

With Premium, Teams or Pro, you can add as many users as you like. Each user will have their own mailbox, calendar and address book. Additional users are not included in the basic packages, but are a paid addition. If you need more aliases or more storage, you can switch to a larger packages in your Tutanota account.

A free Tutanota account consists of one mailbox, calendar and address book. Neither alias addresses nor users can be added to a free account.

How do I add an email alias or a user to my Tutanota account?

You will find an up-to-date process of how to add an email alias to your Tutanota account in our How-to.

You will find an up-to-date process of how to add a user to your Tutanota account in our How-to.