How many email addresses do you actively use?

Hundreds. Having my own domains with all email coming to me lets me give arbitrary (i.e., numbered) addresses when requested, so I can track them when I want, and for example see which ones later to auto-delete, etc. Or for whatever need arises.

Edit: my recollection from some time ago is that pobox.com was useful for the same thing, if one doesn't have one's own domain. I used them before I got mine. There are probably similar services. I liked their attitude and approach, at the time. (no other affiliation.)

Edit again: the above plus some rules in mutt (or thunderbird maybe...), have been really helpful for me. The rules & macros could get rather complex if one wanted I suppose.

(Edit: I've liked pair.com for domain/hosting for a long time: have had good prices/service, helpfulness, no silliness for many years; also no other affiliation but customer.)

(Edit: that email system at my hosting provider also works well for, say, groups like various extended family subsets, so it works something like a mailing list to everyone.)

Edit (sorry, I didn't answer the OPs 2nd question): For most, I use mutt (or thunderbird) to POP (download) them from my hosting provider to my own pc (so, not a business...sorry if not helping), and then do good backups. For some, as mentioned in my previous paragraph, they are auto-forwarded by the hosting provider to whomever, per rules I put in their web UI for my account. It is also possible to create many extra mailboxes (which I used to do ) so other individuals can POP (or view with IMAP) their own email to their own pc. For a business...would have to think whether we need a centralized Exchange-equivalent or if storage on multiple PCs, or IMAP (leave it on the hosting provider's server, but manage from a PC, etc) is OK in a limited situation, given the backups, storage, and specific business needs. I would probably not prefer gmail since Google already has enough centralized power (as discussed in other HN postings about Chrome vs. firefox etc).

I use an open-source helpdesk system to manage business emails. Works like a charm - lets you assign deadlines, priorities, categories, have canned replies, sorting rules, leave internal comments, search previous replies, etc. It's also super-convenient to have 1 interface to multiple emails & signatures (support/sales/per-product addresses) and I would recommend setting one up once you hit 5-10 incoming emails per week.

Aside from that, I have 1 personal address on my main business domain, the name@surname.com (redirects to the 1st one) and a @gmail.com one for people with overzealous spam filters.

Three:

1. My work email

2. My "personal" email, with a silly-sounding address (see my username).

3. A professional-sounding, but non-work-affiliated email (firstname.lastname@gmail.com)

I would love to combine 2 and 3. Unfortunately, I came up with my email/username when I was 12 and didn't know any better, and I don't want it seen in professional correspondence.

I add all three to Apple Mail on my various devices, and access them from a unified inbox. The exception is my work computer (an iMac), where I could add my personal accounts but have chosen not to.

Work, personal Gmail, and more recently a personal burner domain that has hundreds.

The burner domain is great for random website signups. Anything serious is done via Gmail (with two factor), but for the burner domain I use a unique address for every site that needs a sign-up (so if whatever.com needs a sign up then I use whatever@burner, other.org becomes other@burner etc etc - all addresses are directed to one inbox via a catchall) but typically the same password.

So I remember one password instead of one email address, and the address I can work out from the domain. Not exactly secure, but at least slightly resistant to leaked email lists if a site gets hacked (since every site has a unique address and common password, rather than common address and password). I am working on the assumption that people are just automatically trying leaked user-passwd pairs and won't "crack" my system... but if they do no harm done since anything important is on Gmail (I generally trust Google to not get hacked, for better or worse) and I can start again with another burner domain. For important passwords I of course use decent passwords and a password manager, but life is too short for that with websites you might only use once or twice a year and you don't really care about.

I use Zoho for the burner domain. Cheap and reliable. I tried fastmail, proton mail, and tutonova but I preferred zoho's web interface, app, and price (for the features I needed)

I have one personal domain at Fastmail that I use nearly always, but it’s a .me domain and I’ve ran into weird issues with certain services thinking it’s a fake email address or just general unexplained delivery issues over the years, so I fall back to a fastmail.com address in those cases. I also have iCloud and GMail addresses I rarely ever use.

I forward everything into Fastmail and use their web interface and mobile apps.

I have a work address I keep entirely separate.

Don't have any business use, so not sure if this is of any interest to you.

1. Personal domain, currently hosted with Office 365 but I will probably move after the year is up.

2. Student email (.edu, G Suite). Used for all school business, school-related apps, and some things I haven't bothered to move to #1 yet.

3. Gmail account for spammy/annoying websites and signups.

4. Gmail account used for public records/FOIA requests, nothing else.

5. iCloud account (basically used for nothing except iTunes receipts).

6. ProtonMail account--used for my VPN accounts only.

On my Mac mini and iPhone, I use Apple Mail with 1, 2, and 5 added. On my Windows laptop, I access 1 and 2 through webmail (I have Outlook installed for 1 but rarely use it). Anything else, I just sign in to webmail as needed. I also have access to a few team/shared Gmail/G Suite accounts, I don't have these added to Mail b/c I don't want their unread statuses messing up my unread badges.

Only 1/2 are generally used for IRL stuff or accounts that I care about. I follow inbox zero and turn off email notifications for all but the most important stuff (ex security alerts, receipts, eBay auction results) and email analogs (ex. Canvas messages).

I use between 4 & 6 primary email "blocks" with each using several hundred aliases. I keep access to most, but not all of these blocks in Thunderbird on my two laptops. One of the email accounts I only access from a dedicated device while VPN'd. I fetch mail over POP3, wiping the server data, and then move the files to an airgapped machine to read. I have a Protonmail & Tutonota account which I connect to via their apps or websites. I also maintain several small public access servers which handle mail. I use Alpine for that, or Mutt in a pinch.

Friends get one email address from one domain. Work gets aliases from a second domain. Businesses get an alias from a third domain. These are either whitelisted domains where any address will get to me, or I can create the alias on the fly in the moment. I like to know not only if a mailbox is getting spam so I can block the alias, but also so I can stop doing business with companies that sell my data (looking at you, Bank of America).

Is it overkill? Oh yeah, big-time.

Many, I split topics logically over multiple gmail addresses which allowed me to isolate spam. I’ve also used throwaway sims for things like gumtree.com.au - there was a bunch of phone spam that hit the burner number so I’m glad I did that one.

Now I use two dedicated domains with catchalls which seem to work everywhere but gmail which should allow me to attribute and blackhole spam much more effectively. I really wish large providers (o365, aws) would provide low volume accounts for cheaper - having my company sales or procurements associated with my personal company email is silly, but the alternative is $4/month/account which really adds up but running your own mail server has it’s own time costs.

No online businesses.

1) work email (access from the office or through blackberry work, ugh)

2) personal (that’s actually two addresses on similar domains, but I only actually send from one) — google hosted, read through iOS mail or mail.app or win10 mail or web interface

3) a more professionally-sounding personal, which I don’t use much, forwarded to 2)

4) spam hole for random website registrations, read through web interface when I need to confirm an email for some business’ enjoyment

5) one for newsletters, which I convert to a feed to read in miniflux

I guess I also have a Microsoft account from my office 365 subscription, but I never actually opened it.

I tried to limit as much as possible switching between email addresses.

Because of there is no central authority to bind an email to a person, you cannot really ever delete an address.

I used to have a gmail address, and then I switched to a custom domain + email provider when I started to want some emancipation from Google. My gmail address still exists but redirects emails to my new address. I refrained from creating aliases to that address for the very reason that I wouldn’t be able to delete them.

1 professional (Fastmail, own domain) 1 personal (POBox alias, forwarding to iCloud) 1 employer-provided (Google Business) 1 GMail (er ... GMail) 1 iCloud (not publicly used, but collects from POBox) 1 Yahoo (still!)

I use all accounts from Mail on my iPhone; all except my employer's account via Mail.app on my MBP; and my employer's GMail via the GMail web on my work laptop.

I use +-suffixes extensively for signups, etc, so I can blackhole spam when my address gets leaked ...

Roughly four.

The 'personal' email address (although I have some work-related emails on it) which is on Gmail, so I have push notifications on my phone. I also use webmail.

The work address from the institution I'm currently at and the address from the one where I'm currently on leave. These I check daily (or four times a day if I'm bored) on their webmail interfaces.

The old personal address (also on Gmail) which I've discontinued in 2014. This I check once a week.

I've got several - one gmail (aka the "refuse collection" that I use mostly for email registrations for website I suspect will send me more email I care for), one protonmail I use as a backup business email where I'm the customer, plus my main personal email address a handful for side projects that I all run via an email server I host myself on a VPS.

Oh, and a work email address.

I use three emails.

I have my personal email, which is in gmail

I have my website email, which is in gmail for business

And I have my work email, which is also in gmail for business.

I add all three to my laptop and only the first two to my phone.

I use the + feature a lot, for example tendencydriven+github@workdomain.com - they still get arrive in my regular inbox but I can easily see who is sharing my email, and block certain ones if I start getting spam on them.

2 to 7.

One personal/work email on my own domain, one catchall on gmail, mostly for signing up to public services that will spam me (sadly their spam filter is much better than what I can run on my server).

5+ legacy email addys on various non-gmail free services, that i don't sign up with any more but have some of my old accounts.

Fourteen, all on my own server. Each one is used with a different service or person that I communicate with. I access it with Heirloom-mailx; all of the messages go into the same mailbox file, and the /etc/aliases file is used to add or remove email addresses. This helps to avoid spam.

Five. I use them all. Three are not tied to my identity and I use them for secure communications. The other two are for family and friends. Only one is a paid-for service and I've used that service for fourteen years, which permits unlimited ad-hoc addresses.

About 7. I require 3 for personal use (one main, 2 junk for accounts for websites that I don't care about but need an account), one school one, one for my scanners smtp scan to email function and the other 2 are just old ones.

As a customer I use one email address per service, using a catch-all on my domain name. As a business, I have about 3 or 4 email addresses for each business and all of them are managed through a single fastmail.com account

Three Emails:

- accounts@domain.tld - Catch All for emails for services (account/@domain.tld)

- handle@domain.tld - Personal Email

- first@domain.tld - Work/Professional Email

@gmail.com, moving all those to personal domain; few catchalls@domains

1 work, 1 personal, 1 professional (for recruiters and domain stuff)

Four (4)

- Work, run through the company's IT team

- Personal (via gmail)

- Private personal (custom domain)

- Volunteer group email

3: Work, personal, independent business

5 :

- 3 personal (of them 2 personal domains)

- 2 pro/project based