After the
great mambernetics scare of 2020 I've decided find a new email alias/forwarding provider. Based on the info others posted here I quickly my search down to
33mail.com and
SimpleLogin.
This is a brief review of my research into 33mail and SimpleLogin. Note I didn't look too deeply into 33mail since it quickly became apparent that SimpleLogin (SL) was a better value for my situation. I also have only been using SL for a couple days, so I'm not an expert on their services either.
They both seem very similar to SG (SpamGourmet). If you're ok with 33mail's restrictions at $12/year its Premium plan is very affordable. I would have gone with 33mail's premium plan if I just needed protection for my wife and me. However, since I want to be able to protect my whole family I would've needed to bump up to 33mail's Pro plan which is $60/year. For $30/year I believe SL's Premium plan actually gives you more features than 33mail's $60 Pro plan. In other words, if 33mail's $12 Premium plan is too restrictive for you then SL's $30 Premium is probably the best deal. You can compare their prices and features here:
https://www.33mail.com/pricinghttps://simplelogin.io/pricingAs a SG lover I also like to see SL
paying respects to spamgourmet.
The most confusing part of using SL for me was wrapping my head around their terminology. I think I have it sorted now. SL directories allow you to auto create aliases similar to SG's automatically created aliases. I.e. SL directories work like SG usernames, but in SG terminology you just flip the order of "someword" and "username" around like this:
To translate from SL to SG terminology:
- SL directory == SG username
- SL alias == SG someword
- SL mailbox == SG protected address
The example above written using SL terminology:
directory+alias@simplelogin.coNote even the SL webpages sometimes also refer to their directories as usernames. SL explains how their directories work here:
https://simplelogin.io/blog/alias-directory/The biggest limitation to SL directories are that they don't currently work with your own custom domain. However they said they hope to have that working in Jan. In the meantime their web browser extensions make it easy for me to create aliases when needed. The SL website also supports importing (and exporting) aliases.
A big bonus to SL's directories is the ability to set a different Mailbox ("protected address" in SG terminology) for each directory. This feature is key to my ability to manage my entire family from a single account.
The last reason I signed up for SL so quickly is that until Mon 30NOV2020 they're
offering their premium plan for $15 instead of their normal $30.
After comparing 33mail and SL I did also briefly look at
AnonAddy (AA). AA is only $12/year for their Lite plan and their Pro plan is $36/year. However even their Pro plan only allows 4 usernames, I need more usernames than that (SL Premium gives you 50 directories). Because of this limitation I didn't look into AA any more, but according to these two threads on reddit both AA and SL are well liked:
Lastly, since SG and AA have browser extensions that let you easily create new aliases I'm now thinking that the ability to automatically create new aliases on the fly isn't as critical for me anymore. I may instead create a few easy aliases I can give out to people in person (like at a doctor's office), but for any online website use the SL browser extension to create aliases as I need them.