Your Name Inbox

The basics

Mailboxes, aliases, forwarders and shared inboxes

Last reviewed

The quick version

  • A mailbox holds mail. It has a login.
  • An alias is another name that delivers to a mailbox.
  • A forwarder sends copies to a different address.
  • A shared inbox is one mailbox that a team opens.
Four boxes in a grid. Mailbox: real storage and its own password. Alias: another name that delivers to a mailbox. Forwarder: sends copies on to another address. Shared inbox: one mailbox that several people open.
The four kinds of address you will meet.

Mailbox

A mailbox is where messages are delivered and kept.[1] It has its own password. You can sign in to it from a phone or a laptop.

Alias

An alias is an address that forwards to another one.[2] It has no inbox of its own. Nobody signs in to it.

Aliases are handy for two jobs. They can replace a long address that's hard to remember.[2] And they can make a general address like [email protected].[2]

Two addresses, info@example.com and sales@example.com, each with an arrow labelled alias pointing to one real mailbox, jane@example.com. The caption reads two names, one inbox.
Two alias names can lead to one mailbox.

In the picture, both info@ and sales@ are aliases. Jane reads both in one place.

Forwarder

Forwarding means re-sending a message that has already arrived to one or more other addresses.[3] An alias works by forwarding, so the two ideas overlap. A "forwarder" is the same idea: mail is sent on to another address.

Cloudflare's email routing is one example of a forwarder. It sends mail to a verified destination address, and you can set different rules for different addresses.[4]

Shared inbox

A shared inbox lets a group read and answer the same mail. In Microsoft 365, a shared mailbox lets a group monitor and send email from a common address, like [email protected].[5]

When someone replies, the message appears to come from the shared address, not from the person.[5] A shared mailbox also includes a shared calendar.[5]

Three people, Ana, Ben and Cleo, each with an arrow to one shared mailbox called info@example.com. A note says replies appear to come from the shared address.
Several people, one shared address.

One detail catches people out. By default, a new shared mailbox has sign-in blocked.[5] People open it from their own accounts instead.

Which should you pick?

  • Just you: one mailbox, plus aliases for the extra names.
  • A small team on one address: a shared inbox.
  • Mail from an old address: a forwarder, until the old address can go.

You can mix them. Providers differ in what they call each one, so check the words in your own control panel.

What's next

Next: how the mail travels between a server and your app. See IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.

Sources

  1. Email address, Wikipedia (accessed 2026-11-03)
  2. Email alias, Wikipedia (accessed 2026-11-03)
  3. Email forwarding, Wikipedia (accessed 2026-11-03)
  4. Email routing rules and addresses, Cloudflare Docs (accessed 2026-11-03)
  5. Create a shared mailbox, Microsoft Learn (accessed 2026-11-03)