A 40Tech reader recently observed that he counted 9 email addresses that go directly to him, plus two others that he monitored. That got me wondering, so I took a look at the Accounts tab in my Gmail settings, and my eyes popped out of my head. I had 17 email addresses there. I was funneling messages from all of those accounts into Gmail, and replying automatically from the correct address, using a method we’ve discussed earlier. 8 of these were addresses that I used with some regularity.
What about you? How many email addresses do you use? How many do you use regularly? How many do you access from one place?
Thanks to Bob from pcabling.com for the idea for this topic.
Jon says:
Looks like I have 6 accounts funneling into a single gmail. Out of those I use 4 of them on a regular basis – with 2 of them being used daily.
March 20, 2011 — 10:25 pm
Big Dan says:
I close to 20 funneling into Gmail. Most are webmaster or admin @ forwarding addresses. Only 3 are personal domain based forwarders.
I also POP out a couple of ISP based accounts that I never really use and just check them out of habit.
March 20, 2011 — 10:29 pm
Kay says:
Let’s see…6! Two are my main adresses (work&private), the rest for newsletters, forms…internet ‘stuff’.
March 21, 2011 — 2:55 am
Gouthaman Karunakaran says:
I use 2 email addresses. One with Gmail for newsletters and stuff and the other with Google Apps (Custom Domain with my name) for personal communication.
March 21, 2011 — 3:35 am
Gouthaman Karunakaran says:
I use 2 email addresses. One with Gmail for newsletters and stuff and the other with Google Apps (Custom Domain with my name) for personal communication.
I have used Yahoo before, but I’ve been with Gmail since 2008 – never looked back.
March 21, 2011 — 3:36 am
Daryl says:
I have my work email address which I access from Outlook/Exchange and which has numerous aliases to compensate for people getting my name wrong and to make sure that if someone sends it myfirstname@corporatedomainname or myfirstnamemylastname@ or myfirstname.mylastname@ (to name but 3 of the 10!) it still gets to me!
I then have my personal email address which is now @gmail. Previously it was on a personal domain and had a primary address (firstname@mydomain.com). I also however used the domain as a primitive security method and for tracking where my email address had been passed my using (for eg 40tech@mydomain.com).
These are now sucked up by gmail as is my mostly redundant hotmail account. I also have a number of other domains I am sitting on which are wildcarded and spam-protected through my host and set to forward to gmail.
Setting all that out makes it sound a real mess!
March 21, 2011 — 5:57 am
Evan Kline says:
Thanks Jon, Dan, Kay, Gouthaman, and Daryl. Sounds like I’m not alone. It’s also interesting to hear the setup you use (i.e. the reasons behind the multiple addresses). My addresses are mostly for 40Tech (different addresses for receiving comments, submitting or receiving payments, etc.) and a few other sites that I run.
March 21, 2011 — 7:16 am
John says:
Ten email addresses and they all go into gmail, sorry, make that eleven…yahoo is by itself ; )
March 21, 2011 — 7:35 am
Kosmo @ The Soap Boxers says:
There’s one for work. Then there are three more associated with the personal domain for my wife and I (she also has her own address on this domain, and the kids – age 3 and 1 – each have their own). A decade old Yahoo address brings me up to five. There are two tied to my main domain, two more for billing on inquiries for my publishing business. That’s nine. The gmail address that was tied to my original domain makes 10. Then there’s an address tied to the 4 character .org that I own (just so that I can have a very short address). Apparently I have a Facebook.com address now, too?
If I looked in a few nooks and crannies, I’m sure I’d find a another dozen addresses.
March 21, 2011 — 10:17 am
Bobby Travis says:
All of my email lives in Gmail, using the One Inbox to Rule Them All method from my 40Tech post ().
I still use my hotmail address for almost all sign ups, but only check it so Microsoft doesn’t shut it down, and then only check the junk mail, as that is where most of that communication goes, and all non-junk goes to my Gmail. I have one or two — or maybe more — Yahoo addresses that I do not sync with Gmail, and only use for things that I don’t care to ever see again, like when I sign up for something just because I am curious and it forces a sign up out of me.
In Gmail, I currently have 10 addresses that I send from, eight on a semi-regularly basis, but it really comes down to about five or six. Some of those also pop-fetch email to me, but most are forwarded entirely.
March 21, 2011 — 4:25 pm
Daryl says:
@bobby good idea with that Yahoo address. I’d forgotten I’ve got one of them too (comes with my BT Internet account). May now have found a use for it!
March 21, 2011 — 5:04 pm
Bobby Travis says:
Glad to share, Daryl! I haven’t had to use it too often, but definitely enough to make it worthwhile.
March 21, 2011 — 6:12 pm
Sean says:
About 5 or 6. Work one goes to work outlook. All others come to GMAIL w/ backup to another email service.
March 21, 2011 — 9:11 pm
Neil says:
Yeah, i too have more than one email setup on gmail, but the problem with this approach is that you cannot set the time for the email retrieval, either you have to do it manually or it’s random checking….
March 22, 2011 — 6:08 am
Daryl says:
According to Google, gmail pop retrieval of external accounts is rated based on previous attempts to fetch new messages. So yes, you can’t choose the frequency, but in my experience I’ve not had a message from another account come into Gmail “late”.
[Gmail help topic here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21288%5D
March 22, 2011 — 6:15 am
Daryl says:
If getting mail in from another account as a priority is key, then you could look at having it autoforwarded by the host of the “external” account.
I actually have a blend of Mail Fetcher (the gmail tool to access external POP accounts – link above) and auto-forwarding from another domain.
March 22, 2011 — 6:19 am
Neil says:
You are lucky at that!! There have been numerous instances,I had to manually retrieve the latest mails…..it’s not a big deal, but having an option to set the frequency would have been an added advantage…it’s not that I am complaining, i just want others to be aware of this drawback….
March 22, 2011 — 6:19 am
Daryl says:
To be fair Neil, it’s possibly only because those accounts are now rarely used, so anything that’s important will be addressed to one of the main accounts…
March 22, 2011 — 6:21 am
Neil says:
if the funnelling is used by webmasters/admins they will be loosing on realtime emails….which is a disaster….
March 22, 2011 — 6:25 am
Evan Kline says:
You guys might be interested in a method (if it can be called that, it’s so simple) we wrote about to eliminate the delay:
https://www.40tech.com/2010/07/20/how-to-get-all-your-mail-in-gmail-with-no-pop3-delay/
All it entails is setting up forwarding from the other account into Gmail. As long as you have that other account set up as an allowed sending account in Gmail, you can still reply from that account. It is pretty seamless. Works just like POP access, but quicker.
March 22, 2011 — 3:24 pm
chuck says:
I’ve used to use a lot, but stabilized on just one – @gmail. Sometimes I also add an odd alias via google apps for domains, but usually can’t be bothered.
March 22, 2011 — 9:38 am
flippertie says:
Wow.
Under my real name I have work, Google apps, and gmail plus the one provided by my ISP. I separate out my internet persona (flippertie) and have taken gmail, yahoo, and hotmail for that, though I only use gmail to send. They all forward into my google apps inbox (except yahoo…)
Then there are a dozen or so admin, info, catchall etc accounts for some domains I monitor.
Then I do some tech consulting/support for a couple of small companies who have given me an email address so I can look like part of their outfit.
Not to mention all the dummy addresses I use to register for accounts (eg 40tech@mydomain.com ). That’s a hangover from years past when I wanted to know who was selling my email address to spammers…
Then I have a mirror gmail account that receives a filtered selection of my mail so I can access it from any computer. This one has a password I can remember (as opposed to the complex ones managed by LastPass for my other accounts).
I’ve collected these over the years and never stopped to count them before.
March 23, 2011 — 11:11 pm