Burner Mail is an email alias solution to generate burner email addresses and protect your digital identity when shopping online or registering to newsletters.

In this post, we take a look at the similarities and differences between Burner Mail and SimpleLogin.

Open Source vs Proprietary

Burner Mail is a closed-source (proprietary) software.

All SimpleLogin code is open-source. This means the code can be audited by anyone. You can check out the code on SimpleLogin GitHub. All developments, discussions, roadmap also happen on GitHub.

SimpleLogin can also be self hosted, meaning you can install it on your own server.

Emails can contain personal, sensitive information, and therefore open-source email services should be preferred over closed-source, proprietary ones. Do you trust a black box to handle your emails?

Cross-platform

Burner Mail is available on Web and as browser extension.

SimpleLogin can be used on almost all platforms. It’s available on:

• iOS
• Android PlayStore
• Android F-Droid
• Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Brave, Edge, etc), Firefox-based browsers (Firefox, Tor Browser, Waterfox, etc), and Safari.

One SimpleLogin account can be used on all of these devices at the same time.

Nov 10 2021 update: Burner Mail now has iOS and Android apps.

Pricing model

Both SimpleLogin and Burner Mail offer a free tier and a paid tier.

With Burner Mail free tier, you get 5 aliases. You can’t send emails or reply from aliases.

With SimpleLogin free tier, you can create up to 10 aliases. You can send emails or reply from aliases.

On the paid plan, SimpleLogin offers unlimited domain names, PGP encryption, and 50 directories at 30$ per year.

With Burner Mail, you get 1 custom domain name, and no encryption for 34$ per year.

As SimpleLogin infrastructure is optimized and operates at a high scale, the price is lower even with more features.

Able to send emails from alias

In Burner Mail, in order to send an email from your alias, you go to Burner Mail website and compose the email there. In addition to an inefficient interface compared to a standard email client, the emails aren’t stored in your mailbox and you can’t search for them conveniently.

Burner Mail also doesn’t support replying to a forwarded email from your email client.

SimpleLogin supports sending emails from your alias using your usual email client (Gmail, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, etc). You can also reply to a forwarded email just like a normal email: the email will be sent from your alias and your personal mailbox stays hidden.

SimpleLogin also supports multiple recipients emails (i.e. with several addresses in To: and CC:) and can be used in a any email context. For that reason, SimpleLogin business emails are actually email aliases.

Nov 10 2021 update: BurnerMail seems to support reply to forwarded emails from your email client.

PGP encryption

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) allows you to encrypt your emails so your email service can’t read the email content. This adds another layer of security, especially for popular email services that don’t have PGP built in like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo.

PGP is provided by default by some email services such as Proton Mail or enabled with PGP software.

SimpleLogin adds support for PGP on March 2020. Burner Mail doesn’t support PGP at the moment.

HaveIBeenPwned integration

On all free and paid plans, SimpleLogin integrates with HaveIBeenPwned and alerts you if your alias is exposed in a data breach.

This integration is important as it allows you to quickly turn the alias off as soon as the breach happens and protect yourself from unwanted emails like spam or fishing.

Burner Mail advertises a data breach checker but this tools doesn’t work.

Cryptocurrency Payments

Burner Mail accepts fiat payments and you can pay via credit card or PayPal.

Cryptocurrency is an anonymous payment solution and therefore resonates with SimpleLogin goal of protecting our privacy. Therefore, in addition to the credit card and PayPal payment, SimpleLogin supports popular cryptocurrencies at the checkout, thanks to CoinBase Commerce integration.

No Ads, no tracking

Some alias email services choose to use ads to push users to upgrade: this is understandable as a business needs to be sustainable. However as email is personal, SimpleLogin never modifies an email without your permission.

For the same reason, you never see a message to push to upgrade in any email from SimpleLogin.

All data collected by SimpleLogin is documented in the terms and conditions, privacy policy.

Conclusions

In conclusion, we believe SimpleLogin could be better for you if you’re looking for a privacy-focused anonymous email solution.

Burner Mail is great software, and we support every business revolving around users' privacy.