What is an email alias?
An alias is an extra address that delivers to the inbox you already check. You don't get another account or another password.
Updated September 2026
Short answer
People use "alias" for four different things, and providers don't agree on the names. The useful question is simpler: where does the message end up, and who can read it?
Alias
A second address on a mailbox you already have. Mail to shop@ shows up in Anna's inbox next to everything else, and she can reply from shop@ too.
Good for: one person, several addresses
Forwarding
The address keeps nothing. Every message goes straight on to another account, often at another provider. Replies come from that other account.
Good for: family members who want to keep their old inbox
Second mailbox
A separate account with its own password and its own folders. Nobody else can read it.
Good for: a different person
Catch-all
Anything sent to your domain lands in one mailbox, even addresses you never created and misspelled ones. Spam sent to made-up addresses lands there too.
Good for: not losing mail to typos
Alias or second mailbox?
Ask whether someone else needs to read the mail in private. If they do, give them a mailbox. If not, an alias is almost always the better choice.
The common mistake is a separate mailbox for a job, like house@ or bookings@. Somebody checks it for two weeks and then forgets it exists. Put it on an inbox that someone already opens every morning and it gets read.
Does Gmail have aliases?
Not real ones. A free Gmail account has one address, plus two tricks:
- Plus addressing. Mail to anna+shopping@gmail.com arrives at anna@gmail.com. It's handy for filters, but anyone can delete the part after the plus and write to your main address.
- Dots are ignored. a.n.na@gmail.com goes to the same inbox as anna@gmail.com.
Gmail's "Send mail as" setting lets you send from an address you already have somewhere else. It doesn't create one. For addresses like shop@yourname.com, you need a domain of your own.
Aliases are the easiest spam filter
Give every online store its own alias. When petstore@smiths.family starts getting spam, you know who leaked it, and you delete that one alias. Nothing else changes.
A catch-all works the other way round: it accepts every typo and every guess. Turn it on for a few months while people learn your new address, then turn it off.
Aliases on InboxFamily
Each family gets six mailboxes, ten aliases and a catch-all. One alias can deliver to several people, so parents@ reaches both parents. You add and remove aliases in the panel in a few seconds.
See how InboxFamily compares with Gmail, iCloud+ and Google Workspace.
Addresses for everyone in the family
Six mailboxes, ten aliases and a catch-all on your own domain. $19 a month for all of it.
Find your family's domain