An email alias is a forwarding address in the format of an email address. It can be used for easier memorization, generic public inquiries, and to protect real user accounts. It can be created through a website host’s control panel and must have a specific action associated with it.
An email alias is simply an email address created and used for email address forwarding. It is not an actual user account, nor is it a user account on a mail server. It’s just a name that needs to be in the format of an email address, which is made up of a name and the “at” symbol, followed by a domain name. The word “alias” means an assumed name and denotes one or more names by which a person or entity is also known. Some people think of an email alias as a virtual email address because, except that it doesn’t correspond to a real user account, it behaves in every other way like a real email address.
There are many good reasons to create an email alias, and there are several ways to do it. Some real email addresses are quite long and can be hard to remember. This is especially true in the case of an employer-provided address because a typical format for email addresses is the employee’s first name followed by a period, followed by their last name, the “at” symbol, and the domain name of the company. If a person has a name that is long or not easy to remember or spell, he or she may be able to use an e-mail alias that is much easier to remember and shorter in characters than the actual account.
Another reason a person might want to create an alias is to provide a publicly available generic email address. This is a common practice of many webmasters who often provide visitors to websites they are responsible for a way to contact them via email. Some companies also choose to use an email alias to which website visitors can send general inquiries or inquiries. For example, a site’s webmaster could set up an email alias of “webmaster@”, followed by the domain name, and general inquiries could be sent to “info@”, followed by the domain name.
A popular way to create an alias is to go through the control panel, if available, of the website host company. There is typically an email option that allows for the creation of actual user accounts and the email alias from which mail is forwarded. When an email alias is created, it must have a specific action associated with it such as forwarding, because it is not a true standalone account that can “hold” mail on the mail server. An alias is useful for several reasons: it can have multiple recipients, it can help protect or hide the actual user account, it doesn’t take up space on the mail server like a real user account does, and it can be deleted without losing mail already forwarded to an real address.
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