Frequently asked questions

Tech questions

The current limit is 25MB. For large attachments, we suggest using a file upload service and send the link instead. You can find some file sharing services that respect our privacy on Privacy Guides
Another reason of having this limit is the PGP encryption is a heavy process, supporting a bigger size put an important load on SimpleLogin servers.

When an alias is deleted, it's put into a global trash and we make sure that it can't be reused. All historic information on the alias (the account that creates the alias, alias contacts, etc) are deleted to respect your privacy.
This applies to all aliases created with SimpleLogin domains.
You can however restore an alias created with your own domain.

Our PGP keys are on PGP keys page. If you enable PGP, all emails are signed with the signer@simplelogin.io key.

At the bottom of the Settings page, you can delete your account. This operation is irreversible and we have no way to recover your data.

The short answer is yes you can. We use email aliases to run our business, manage our taxes, handle our bank operations and so far so good :).
A longer answer is the email protocol is designed to be highly resilient and an email is almost never lost. If SimpleLogin cannot deliver the email to your mailbox, we will notify you so you can take appropriate action. You can also set up a secondary mailbox in addition to your primary mailbox that can be used as a backup.

General questions

Email alias is similar to forward email address: all emails sent to an alias will be forwarded to your inbox.
Thanks to SimpleLogin technology, you can also send emails from an alias.
For your contact, the alias is therefore your email address. More info about email alias on What is an email alias.

Email subaddressing, also known as the plus (+) trick, popularized by Gmail and supported by some email services, allows you to create new email addresses by appending "+" to your current email address. Says your email is name@proton.me, you can quickly create another address like name+facebook@proton.me for Facebook, name+groupon@proton.me for Groupon, etc.
Though practical, it has some downsides:
- You cannot reply from the + address: your real email will appear as the sender.
- The + trick is well-known and some websites don't allow sign-ups with email addresses that contain +.
- Using + trick doesn't protect your privacy: one can easily remove the + part to have your real email. If your + address appears in the data breach, your real address is probably also in the hands of spammers. You could check whether your email is leaked using website like have i been pwned
- By removing the + part, advertisers can link these + addresses together to have your browsing history.

SimpleLogin aliases don't have any of these downsides. You can read more about the pros and cons of using the + trick on What makes email alias a better alternative to email plus sign (+)

SimpleLogin is the most advanced email alias solution and is in active development. Here are some differences between SimpleLogin and other email forwarding/alias services:

  • Fully open-source: both SimpleLogin server and client code (browser extension, JS library, mobile apps) are open-source so anyone can freely inspect and improve the code.
  • Covers all major platforms: Chrome/Firefox/Safari extension for desktop, iOS and Android apps for mobile.
  • The only email forwarding solution that can be self-hosted, i.e. you could run SimpleLogin on your server. With our detailed self-hosting instructions and most of components running as Docker container, anyone who knows ssh is able to deploy SimpleLogin on their server.
  • You can send/reply emails from alias. There's no limits on the number of sends/replies.
  • Unlimited bandwidth.
  • No ads, no tracker.
  • Not just email alias: SimpleLogin is also a privacy-focused and developer-friendly identity provider that:
    - respects user privacy
    - is simple to use for developers.
    SimpleLogin offers a privacy-focused alternative to the "Login with Facebook/Google/Apple" buttons.
  • Plenty of features: browser extension, custom domain, catch-all alias, OAuth libraries, etc. and much more to come.
  • Open roadmap at GitHub: you know the exciting features we are working on.

SimpleLogin alias are permanent as opposed to the temporary email addresses created on services like temp-mail.org, 10minutemail.net, etc.
SimpleLogin also doesn't store the emails, they are stored in your mailbox.
SimpleLogin is simply a different product for a different need.

Our revenue comes only from subscriptions, that means the product will stay ad-free forever.

These 2 features both allow you to create alias on-the-fly, meaning you don't have to open SimpleLogin to create a new alias.
Enabling catch-all on your domain allows you to use ANYTHING@my-domain.com as alias with ANYTHING being any word. The only limit is it has to have less than 128 characters.
Alias Directory is similar to catch-all, you can use your_directory+ANYTHING@simplelogin.co as alias. your_directory is the name of the directory you created.

You can reply directly from your email client. Just click on the "reply" button, the reply will be routed via SimpleLogin and SimpleLogin will make it coming from your alias. Your personal email will stay invisible to the original sender.

Technically, the From header in your email is replaced by a special alias dynamically generated for each sender. When you reply, your reply is actually sent to this special alias and SimpleLogin will relay the reply back to the sender, making sure the email is sent from your alias. All information about your personal email address is removed during that process.

A reverse-alias is a special alias that allows you to send email from your alias.
A reverse-alias is created for each alias you want to send email from and each contact you want to send email to.
When you send an email to a reverse-alias from your personal email, the email will be sent from your alias to the contact.

As a normal email address, an email alias is always there unless you delete it.

We use servers from Proton and UpCloud - a cloud provider based in Finland.

You can bring your own domains into SimpleLogin and create aliases like contact@your-domain.com, hi@your-domain.com.
As you might have probably guessed, you can then use SimpleLogin to manage your business emails instead paying for an expensive solution like Google Workspace.
All our business emails (e.g. contact@simplelogin.io) are actually aliases 🤫

Having a subdomain allows you to quickly create aliases on the fly, without having personal domain. For example, if you own the subdomain my-sub.aleeas.com, you can make up an alias like mcdonald@my-sub.aleeas.com when you are ordering a McDonald burger without opening SimpleLogin app.

You can find the list of all frequent question/answer on the FAQ page.
If you don't find the answer there, please send your question to support@simplelogin.zendesk.com.
You can also create an issue on our forum.

Partner/Developer questions

Do you know that Facebook and Google use these buttons to track your users browsing history so that they can provide more personalized ads?

As SimpleLogin isn't fueled by advertising and gives users total control over their data, we don't have any incentive to utilize your user data.

All SimpleLogin code is fully open source on GitHub

Anyone can freely audit the code or setup their own SimpleLogin server.

SimpleLogin revenue is based on a transparent and sustainable model that allows us to have a privacy-first and tracker-free product.

Yes absolutely! We started with the web platform simply because they can be used for mobile app as well via a Android WebView or IOS UIWebView.

We plan to provide a SDK and some examples for Android, iOS, Windows quite soon. Stay tuned!

Plan/Pricing questions

When your subscription ends, all aliases you created continue working normally, both on receiving and sending emails. Concretely:
- All aliases/domains/directories/mailboxes you have created are kept and continue working normally.
- You cannot create new aliases if you exceed the free plan limit, i.e. have more than 10 aliases.
- As features like catch-all or directory allow you to create aliases on-the-fly, those aliases cannot be automatically created if you have more than 10 aliases.
- You cannot add new domain, directory or mailbox.

For example, if you have 100 aliases by the time your subscription ends, these 100 aliases will continue receiving and sending emails normally. You cannot however create new aliases.

If you are in the free plan, you cannot create new aliases when you reach the maximum number of aliases (i.e. 10 aliases).
Aliases that would otherwise be created automatically via the catch-all domain or directory feature also cannot be created.

We offer important discounts or free premium for:
- students, professors or technical staffs working at an educational institute
- activists, dissidents or journalists
- charity organizations
Please send us an email at support@simplelogin.zendesk.com for more info.

We used to offer free premium accounts for students but this program ended at June 17 2021. Please note this doesn't affect existing accounts who have already benefited from the program or requests sent before this date.

We use Paddle for handling payments via credit cards and PayPal. Paddle currently supports the following payment methods:

  • Mastercard
  • Visa
  • PayPal
  • Apple Pay
  • Wire Transfers (ACH/SEPA/BACS)
  • Maestro
  • American Express
  • Discover
  • Diners Club
  • JCB
More information can be found on Paddle supported payment methods.
For cryptocurrency, we use Coinbase Commerce that currently supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dai, Ethereum, Litecoin and USD Coin. In the future, we are going to support Monero as well. In the meantime, please send us an email at support@simplelogin.zendesk.com if you want to use this cryptocurrency.

No we don't have a refund policy because SimpleLogin has a trial period where you can try all premium features.

No we don't have a family plan but offer 30% reduction for additional subscriptions. Please contact us at support@simplelogin.zendesk.com for more information.

Yes you can also buy SimpleLogin subscription coupon via ProxyStore, our official reseller.