My email addresses

Note: My email addresses is part of Fastmail's updated settings. Where we previously offered "aliases" (for receiving mail) and "sending identities" (for sending mail), we now simply offer these as "email addresses." Per user feedback, we made these changes to simplify the user experience.

At the Settings → My email addresses screen, you can manage all of your email addresses in one place. 

This screen makes it easy to quickly create new email addresses for different purposes, whether you want to generate a Masked Email address to use with a new service, create a professional looking address, or just try something new.

If you are an admin looking to create an email address for another user in your account, this can be done by going to Settings → Team & Sharing.

• Viewing my email addresses
  • Status
• Creating an email address
• Editing my email addresses
• Deleting an email address
• Authenticated delivery (SMTP settings)
• Team addresses

Viewing my email addresses

The Settings → My email addresses screen shows every email address that you have created in Fastmail, every email address that you have migrated to Fastmail, or any email address that has been shared with you by an admin in your Fastmail account.

At the top of the screen, you can see your total number of addresses, the number of email addresses you have set up, and the number of Masked Email addresses you have generated. Click the Masked Email button to quickly switch to your Settings → Masked Email screen and manage your Masked Email addresses from there.

By default, the list is sorted in alphabetical order of addresses. If you wish to sort the list by name or domain, this can be done by clicking the Email address dropdown at the top of the list. To switch the sort direction between ascending and descending order, click the arrow icon next to the dropdown.

You can also quickly find an email address by typing part of the address or name in the Search Addresses bar. The Search Addresses bar supports glob pattern matching using the character "*". By typing * and the string you want to search, you can search for all of your addresses that have that string anywhere in the address. For example, searching for *foo* will return results containing both food@domain.tld and dogfood@domain.tld.

Status

The Status column in your address list lets you easily see at a glance if an email address is able to send and receive mail.

An email address will have one of the following statuses listed:

• Active: This email address sends and receives mail through Fastmail.
• Blocked: This email address sends mail through Fastmail, but has been set to reject incoming mail.
• External: This email address either a) does not send through your Fastmail account, or b) does not directly receive mail at your Fastmail account.
• Unverified: This is an external email address that has not been authenticated. You will need to authenticate this address before you can use it to send mail. (See the Authenticated delivery (SMTP settings) section below for more details.)
• Plus: This is a plus address for another email address in your account. 
• Subdomain: This is a subdomain address for another email address in your account. 
• Indirect: This email address is successfully set up to send through Fastmail, but we're not sure if you're able to receive mail at this address.

You may see the following tags next the address's status:

• Shared: This email address can be accessed by other users in your Fastmail account. 
• Send via Fastmail: This is an external email address that you have set to send through Fastmail's servers.
• Masked email icon: You have manually set up a sending identity for this Masked Email address.

You can click the funnel icon to filter your email addresses by status or type (External, Shared, or Personal). 

Creating an email address

If you wish to create a new email address for yourself, you can do so by following these steps:

1. Go to Settings → My email addresses and click New address.
2. Enter the address you'd like. If you want to change the address's domain, you can click the dropdown menu and select the desired domain. You can choose from custom domains that have been set up in your Fastmail account, or you can choose from Fastmail's domains. When you're ready, click Continue.
3. A new screen will appear where you can set a name and signature for the email address, and edit other advanced settings. (See the Editing my email addresses section below for more details.)
4. Click Save.

Editing my email addresses

You can make changes to any email address by finding it in the list and clicking the Edit button.

From the Edit screen, you can make the following changes:

• Name: The name that recipients will see on messages you've sent from this address.
• Hide this address when composing messages: If this option is enabled, this address will not appear as an option when sending a message unless you click Show all. (This option may be helpful if you receive mail at a large number of email addresses, but you don't use a lot of them for sending mail.)
• Signature: The signature that recipients will see on messages you've sent from this address.

Additional settings can be changed by clicking Show advanced preferences. We strongly recommend leaving these settings unchanged unless you are an advanced user. Here, you can make the following changes: 

• Reply to: If you want to send messages from this email address, but you explicitly want replies to your messages to go to a different address, you can set that email address here.
• Auto Bcc: If you want messages sent from this email address to automatically Bcc a different address, you can set that email address here.
• Save sent messages in: If you don't want your sent messages saved in your Sent folder, you can choose the folder here. You can also select whether or not to save messages sent in a third-party email client.
• Nickname: You can add a nickname for viewing an email address in My email addresses. The nickname will only be visible to you from that screen. This option can be helpful if you need to quickly tell addresses apart or recall what an address is used for.

Be sure to click Save after making changes.

Deleting an email address

If you wish to delete an email address, you can do so by following these steps:

1. Go to Settings → My email addresses.
2. Click the Edit button next to the address you wish to delete.
3. Click the Delete button.
4. A Verify it's you box will appear. Enter your password and click Continue. (For more information, see our Password-protected actions help page.)
5. The address is now deleted.

Authenticated delivery (SMTP settings)

If you see that your email address has an Unverified status, this means that it is an external email address that has not been authenticated.

You will not be able to use the address to send mail until you either a) set up authenticated sending, or b) verify the email address. Attempting to send a message through Fastmail or a third-party email client will result in an error message, or the messages will be rejected on the SMTP level.

To resolve this issue, click the Fix it button next to your unverified address, and choose one of the following options:

Set up authenticated sending (recommended)

If you choose this option, you will be able to send mail through your external email providers' servers. We recommend choosing this option, as this is the best way to ensure that your mail will be successfully delivered.

If your external address is at Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, or Yahoo, you will see a button that allows you to log in to the email provider and connect your account to Fastmail.

If your external email address is not at one of the above email providers, you will be prompted to enter the SMTP server details for the email provider. If you need help with finding or entering the email provider's SMTP server information, our support team would be happy to help you with this. 

Verify address

If you choose this option, you will need to prove that you can successfully receive mail at this email address. This allows us to verify that you own or have access to this email address.

Clicking the Verify button will open a new screen where you can request a single-use code to that email address. Click Send verification code. When you have received the verification code at that address, you can then return to this page, enter the code, and click Verify. Once this has been done, you will be able to send mail using this address.

Even after verifying your email address, you will see a "Messages may not be delivered" banner on the address's Edit screen. This is because you are not sending through your provider's servers. Some mail services may see this as an attempt at email spoofing, and thus may mark your messages as spam or bounce them entirely. (Setting up authenticated sending, as noted above, is the best way to avoid this.)

Team addresses

If you are an admin looking to add a new user to your account, create a new email address for a user in your account, or create a shared email address to be accessed by other users in your account, this can be done by going to Settings → Team & Sharing.