Every so often, I think about switching web hosts because mine is crazy expensive, but I'm on a grandfathered plan with this one feature that I really like.

Pair.com's old plans used qmail for the e-mail server [www.pair.com] which let you set up emails such as:
gareth-default @ domain.com

And then you swap out the "default" part with whatever you want and it gets delivered to you. I.e. gareth-macresource@, gareth-amazon@, etc. I use this to have unique e-mails at different sites so that if one of them gets hacked, sells my address, etc, I know who it is and I can delete that specific address.

I know I can do something similar with Gmail using a '+', but apparently some sites won't recognize a '+' in an e-mail address. Plus, that also gives away your actual e-mail address. In my setup, sending email to gareth@ would get bounced.

Having a hard time finding another web host with qmail or a similar feature since it's tough to Google this feature, so if anyone knows a web host with it, let me know! Thanks.

Netfirms provides this e-mail functionality via its "catch-all" setting:

[www.netfirms.com]

ICDsoft.com has that with their hosting plans. Just designate one email account ( e.g., gareth-default @ domain.com ) and then anything that doesn't match another email account in your domain will be delivered to it (e.g., gareth-amazaon @ domain.com, gareth-adamandeve @ domain.com, zxxasdlk @ domain.com, etc.).

Another alternative is to create the various site-specific email addresses as forwarding aliases to a "catch-all" account.

The way I have always seen it work is like this:

1) You've got a domain name, and maybe web hosting at a provider.

2) Said provider gives you a block of email addresses when you register this domain, or sign up for hosting. Most do this, that I have seen. Some even give away blocks of 25, 50, or 100 at a time.

3) You can use this block of email addresses any way you want, like in your example. Make a new address for every site you sign up for, just don't exceed the block of addresses you bought.

4) Many providers offer a catch-all email account option. What this means is that if you only have 1 email address at a single domain, and you turn on catch-all, if any email is sent to your domain that doesn't match that one email address, it will get delivered to you anyway. This is an example from Godaddy: [support.godaddy.com]

5) You might even be able to do forwarding email addresses, like MEG says above. These are like phantom email addresses that don't have mailboxes, but instead bounce/forward to a real email address in your domain.

Hope that helps.

Jeff



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2014 05:03PM by kj4btkljv.

I guess I should clarify. Just about every web host has universal catchall e-mails, but most suggest you don't use it, because spammers will start sending e-mails to common, generic addresses, such as john@, bob@, info@, etc, and you'll receive all of those until you delete each individual address.

I do NOT want a universal catch-all.

The idea behind the qmail setup is that ONLY e-mails addressed to gareth-default@ (where 'default' can be anything) can be delivered. Also I can have an infinite number of e-mail addresses on the fly and I don't have to login to the web host to set-up a new forwarding e-mail address every time I want a new address.