Mailbox Address vs. Forward-Only Address: What’s The Difference
What’s A Mailbox Address?
A mailbox address is a mailbox that receives emails and stores them on the server. You can access your mailbox online by visiting webmail.yourdomain.com (replace yourdomain.com with your domain) and you can also configure your email client (e.g. Outlook or Mail App), to download the emails to your local device (using POP) or set your email client to stay in sync with your mailbox on the server (using IMAP). A mailbox address let’s you send emails from that address.
What’s A Forward-Only Address?
A forward-only address is an email address that simply forwards emails on to one or more other email addresses. You cannot send emails from a forward-only email address.
Recommended Setup
We generally recommend setting up mailboxes for specific employees or team members and using forward-only addresses for departments. If Peter (sales department), Jenny (accounts department) and Andy (support department) are on your team, then we would setup the following 3 mailboxes:
- peter@yourdomain.com
- jenny@yourdomain.com
- andy@yourdomain.com
This way Peter, Jenny and Andy can configure their email clients to work with their personal email accounts and they can send emails from these addresses.
Additionally we would also setup the following 3 forward-only addresses:
- sales@yourdomain.com → to forward to peter@yourdomain.com
- accounts@yourdomain.com → to forward to jenny@yourdomain.com
- support@yourdomain.com → to forward to andy@yourdomain.com
If any of your team members changes it’s simple to edit the email accounts and update the forward-only addresses.
Can A Mailbox Address Also Be A Forwarding Address?
No, a mailbox address can either be set to be a forwarding-only address or a mailbox. It cannot be both.
Additional Example
If Peter is in charge of sales, but Jenny also needs to receive inquiries to stay in the loop, then you might have a sales@yourdomain.com forward emails to both peter@yourdomain.com and jenny@yourdomain.com.
Need Another Email Address?
When requesting a new email address, please make sure to let us know whether your new email address needs to be a mailbox or a forward-only address.
For mailbox addresses, please let us know the full name of the owner of the mailbox. For a forward-only address, please let us know what email address(es) the new address needs to forward to.
Need Additional Support?
If you have a question or need additional support, please contact us.
