Support Start > Email > Email and Webmail Basics > Mailbox vs. Forwarding Address

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Confused about whether to choose an email mailbox or a forwarding address when you create a new address?

Both allow you to create new addresses like “sales@example.com” and “yourname@example.com”, but there are a number of differences. The information below will help you decide which to use.

Forwarding addresses

A forwarding address is simpler to use than a mailbox. It allows you to forward incoming mail to a different address you already have, and you don't have to set up any new accounts in your mail program.

However, forwarding addresses have several drawbacks:

1. Messages forwarded to another address will be mixed with other messages sent directly to that address.
2. If you send or reply to a message, the recipient will see the address of the other mailbox as the "From" address.
3. You can't read forwarded mail using our Webmail pages.
4. Forwarding involves three mail companies for each message instead of just two, so it can be less reliable if one of the companies has problems.
5. Forwarding makes our spam filters less accurate: because we only handle your incoming mail, we can't tell who you normally send outgoing email to.

E-mail mailboxes

If these drawbacks bother you, you should use a mailbox instead. This solves the problems of forwarding addresses:

1. A mailbox stores your mail separately on our servers. Your mail won't be mixed with mail at other addresses.
2. Your mail program (or Webmail) will use the correct "From" address when you send or reply to a message.
3. The messages can be read using our Webmail system (as well as many other programs and devices).
4. Since the messages stay on our servers, problems at other companies won't make your email less reliable.
5. Our systems know who you send outgoing mail to and make sure the replies will never be blocked as "spam".

Using both

It’s possible for an address to be both a mailbox and forwarding address, simply by adding it to both sections in our control panel. If you do that, two copies of the each message will be delivered: one to the mailbox and one to the forwarding destination.