The best email alias services, and when you want a temp inbox instead

If you want the best email alias for everyday use, Proton’s SimpleLogin is the strongest all-round pick: it forwards to whatever inbox you already use, it lets you reply from the alias, and it is not tied to one browser or one phone. addy.io is the better choice if you want open source code and the option to run it yourself. Firefox Relay and Apple Hide My Email are the easiest, because they are already sitting inside software you own.

Here is the part most roundups skip. An alias and a disposable inbox solve different problems, and picking the wrong one is how people end up with a real mailbox slowly filling with forwarded junk.

What an email alias actually does

An alias is a second address that belongs to you and forwards to your real one. You give the alias to a shop, the mail lands in your normal inbox, and if that address starts attracting spam you switch off the one alias instead of changing your life.

The important word is forwards. Your real mailbox is still the final destination, and the alias provider sits in the middle while the mail passes through. That is the trade, so the provider’s own security posture and retention policy matter as much as its feature list.

SimpleLogin: the strongest all-rounder

SimpleLogin, now part of Proton, is the one to beat. You can create aliases from a browser extension, an app, or your own custom domain, and its documentation covers both halves of the job: receiving forwarded mail and sending replies from the alias, so a conversation can continue without ever exposing your real address. You can also point different aliases at different mailboxes.

The honest downsides: it is one more account to look after, and the more useful features sit on paid tiers. Check their pricing page for what the free plan covers today.

addy.io: the open source option

addy.io does the same job and publishes its source. The web app, the mobile apps and the browser extension are all on GitHub, and the service can be self-hosted. It supports anonymous replies, multiple recipients per alias, custom domains and an API, so it also suits people who want to script the whole thing.

Pick it if you want to read the code or remove the middleman entirely by running it on your own server. The catch is that self-hosting mail means you now own a deliverability problem, and keeping a small mail server out of other people’s spam folders is a genuine ongoing job. Reply support sits on the paid plans, so check their pricing page.

The masks already built into what you own

Firefox Relay gives you masked addresses that forward to your real inbox, strips trackers from the mail it passes on, and supports replies. If you already use Firefox, it is a button in the signup form rather than a new service to learn.

Apple Hide My Email is part of iCloud+. It generates a random address at the moment you sign up for something, routes the mail to your normal Apple address, and lets you deactivate that address later. On an iPhone the friction is close to zero, but it only follows you as far as Apple’s ecosystem does.

DuckDuckGo Email Protection is the same idea, summed up by its own tagline: more privacy, same inbox.

All three win on convenience rather than control. Limits and paid features change, so check each provider’s page rather than trusting a number in an article.

When a temporary inbox beats an alias

Sometimes you do not want the mail at all. A one-time download link. A hotel wifi portal. A forum you will read once. A trial you are evaluating for an hour. If the mail you are catching is your own signup flow rather than someone else’s, that is a testing job, and the tools built for checking transactional email suit it better.

An alias for that is bookkeeping: you have created another address to name, store and eventually clean up, and the mail still lands in your real mailbox. A temporary inbox makes the opposite trade. InboxDome opens one in a click with no signup, mail appears live as it arrives, and the address is receive-only: it cannot send, which is exactly why it cannot be used to spam or spoof anyone. Nothing is forwarded, so your real mailbox never enters the picture.

Because those inboxes are meant to be thrown away, the handling is built around that. Consumer mail is kept for 24 hours by default and 7 days at the very most, then destroyed, with a cleanup job running every 15 minutes. The full schedule is on the retention page. Messages are rendered in a sandboxed frame, remote images are blocked so a sender cannot tell you opened anything, and the inbox secret stays in your browser instead of travelling through server logs. That is written up in detail on the InboxDome security page.

Where InboxDome is the wrong choice

Plainly, so you do not find out later:

• Any account you will need again. Banks, airlines, government portals, anything with password recovery. The inbox is destroyed within days by design, and losing the address can mean losing the account.
• Anything that needs a reply. Receive-only means receive-only. If a seller or a support agent has to write back and you have to answer, you want an alias.
• Mail you want to keep and search next year. Use a real mailbox, aliased.
• Sites that reject disposable domains. An alias from Apple or Proton usually passes where a throwaway domain does not.

For every one of those, an alias is the right tool and a temporary inbox is the wrong one.

How to choose, in one line each

• One address per service, kept forever, forwarding into your existing inbox: SimpleLogin.
• The same, but open source or on your own hardware: addy.io.
• Zero setup, inside software you already use: Firefox Relay or Apple Hide My Email.
• Receive one code, then never think about it again: a temporary inbox.

If neither an alias nor a plain throwaway inbox fits, the rundown of temp mail alternatives covers the rest of the field.

Most people end up using both. The best email alias is the one you will actually keep using, so aliases carry the accounts that matter and a disposable inbox absorbs everything that does not. If you want to see how the disposable half is handled before you trust it with anything, start with how InboxDome protects an inbox, then read more on temporary email.