quick random question, and I think it’s more of a matter of preference, but I want to hear some feedback and learn something new.
Case example
Joe has an email address, and uses joe@mydomain.com
Joe wants to enroll in the Apple Dev Program -
— should Joe make a new email dev@mydomain.com?
----should Joe just make an alias of dev@ for his joe@ email?
Joe later wants to do social media for his project
—should Joe make a new email hello@ ?
—should Joe make an alias instead?
What is the deciding factor of e-mail account versus e-mail alias?
Pros/Cons?
Do you want everything in one inbox or different inboxes?
I use different email accounts because I don’t want stuff clogging up my primary inbox. I accomplish this in my Microsoft 365 tenant using Shared Inboxes to minimize the extra accounts I have to pay for.
I use both methods.
If I have to write myself often on a special Mail-Adress, I create an account for that.
If I write myself on that address only on occasion, and use it mainly for receiving Mails, I use an alias only, and catch the Mails toward this address with the Catch-All function of my Mailserver.
I would also divide between the adress I use for my Dev-Account, and the on I publish to get feedback from my customer.
I have work email, personal email with a local service provider, and personal email on gmail.
My work email address has three aliases that resolve to the same inbox.
I have three different accounts on my local service – jjw…@, jjwonline@, and jjwios@. My spouse and I share a joint account (e.g. for bills) also on the local service – l…w@.
I have only one gmail address.
I find the separation that I set up in the four personal accounts on the same local service provider to be indispensable in separating out noise as well as in managing finances jointly.
Eventually in the future (when my work accounts “retire”), I will likely trim down to one main email account, one “online” email (e.g. for non-essential shopping and forum sites), and one joint email account.
To answer your direct questions … IMO, Joe should have his account, a dev@… account, and an “online” account. By example …
I tend to make separate email accounts. Which is why I have 28 at the moment. That way I can either cleanly sort stuff as it comes in or have it dump to a single inbox for processing. Plus for me, Some accounts will be eventually handed off to another perosn (accounts for officer positions in organizations for example) and it’s a lot cleaner to have them totally separate. I would for sure sort out ht edeve account vs a private one if possible.
Aliases get confusing for me and also can cause problems when sending email especially to government addresses.
Yeah. If the email has to come FROM a particular address, or is to be eventually handed off to somebody else, a separate account is good practice.
The Apple Dev thing I’ve heard is email-address-dependent, so if there’s ever a chance the app will be sold to somebody else my understanding is that best practice is to have a different account that can be transferred - and probably ideally a separate domain.
But if it’s just one person, and there’s no plan or envisioned future need to hand off, I don’t see a good reason for multiple addresses. Most modern email software can sort email by the “to” address as well, so segmenting in the local mail client isn’t a challenge when using aliases.
I have two email accounts - one I use for all business-related accounts (like software registration and course purchases) and a gmail account I use for everything else.
Both of those feed into one central inbox, and I use Gmails filters/labels to auto-file and organize incoming messages there. Rather than sorting/organizing by email address, I do it by sender address. Same result without having to remember a dozen different email addresses or log into a dozen different inboxes.