Strategy for multiple email addresses?

Question

Apologies if this is off topic, this is really a question about branding.

I work full time in IT, but more recently some of my side projects have been gaining more traction.

I have:

• A 'Humans of' Facebook page.
• A political/relationships blog.
• An interactive geometric art webapp.

I'm wanting to generally consolidate these projects under a full stack web and media development umbrella. ie. selling my services as a someone who can implmement a full social web strategy, with particular emphasis on the web development.

The question I have is about email addresses.

For example with my blog, for research purposes I might want to be emailing various people for information, and in that scenario it would be good to have a @eyesofablacksheep.com email address.

I don't have a domain name for my Humans of Newtown page, and at this point I don't particularly want one - but I do need a Humans of Newtown email to add to my business card. Currently I'm just using a gmail address - but is that unprofessional?

And mainly, because web development is what I'm most likely to get paid for - I need a business email @blacksheepcode.com for doing work there.

The question is - is there a way to set up multiple email addresses without having to pay separately for each one? - Given that I'm not currently earning money from these side projects, these costs quickly add up.

Is there another simple way to setup email addresses for multiple domains without a paying for each one?

Answer 1

I do this, and for free as well.

I have 4 domains that I'm responsible for, 2 that are my own personal, and 2 that other organizations pay for after I bill them. I have an email at each.

It's great to have one main inbox for your work related stuff, and only you can pick which domain to put it all through.

On all the others, point the MX records at a free mail service for 1 email address/domain; I use Zoho for this (no affiliation). Any emails sent to my kinda-personal domain gets forwarded to my main one, so I only have one to check on my phone. The headers are maintained, so I can see if it's [email protected] vs [email protected].

Answer 2

Short answer, no.

Longer: You might want to use a workaround, register one domain with a more generic name and use each of the things you mention above as a brand (i.e. an email address) on that generic domain name. You can then use subdomains xxx.example.com to even create specific websites for each brand. Most hosting providers will allow you to register as many email addresses as you like within reasonable limits. If you use Gsuite or similar for emails instead of the default mail from your provider, you might want to set up an alias instead of an email address (as each email box on Gsuite needs to be paid for).

I suppose this is personal preference, but I feel a gmail address (or any other free service) is unprofessional, you really do need your own address. If only because gmail will index & search all contents of your email for profiling and ad purposes in the free version.

Answer 3

Long story short without paying somewhere it will be harder.

But I could explain at least 2ways to do it

1' It what I did for few months : solution is to find a email provider such as Tutanota.de and you buy a 5 alias for around 10$US/year and you will be able to send from 5differents email which could be from 5 differents domain name.

I point Tutanota because I tried with different provider and it have always something wasn't really working like; - unable to have multidomain - able to receive from different email@domain but unable to send from it;

The down side it's only manageable via a webmail + apps so your unable to use it as a SMTP server to send from your website, such as exemple.

2' It what I do now : I built my own server in a way i'm able to send and receive from and as many email and domain I need.

• arstechnica how to run your own e-mail server
• Yunohost could do this job too

Of course maybe you don't want to manage your own server So we could have a more private chat and I could see if I could host you ;)