A mailbox is a real inbox with a password. An alias just forwards mail to an inbox you already have. Here's how to choose the right one every time.

MailAfiniti gives you two ways to create an email address, and picking the right one saves money and confusion. A mailbox is a real inbox. An alias is a forward. This short guide makes the choice obvious and shows how each appears in the portal.

What you'll learn:

What a mailbox is and when to use one
What an alias is and when to use one
A simple rule for choosing
How each affects your plan

A mailbox is a real inbox

A mailbox is a genuine, self-contained inbox. It has:

Its own password, so someone can log in to it.
Its own storage, where its mail actually lives.
The ability to send and receive in its own right.
A connection to any mail app (Outlook, Apple Mail, phone) over IMAP and SMTP.

Use a mailbox whenever a real person or function needs to log in and read mail. jane@acme.com for Jane, info@acme.com as your main inbox, and support@acme.com if a team actually works out of it: all mailboxes.

You create and manage mailboxes on the Email Accounts page in the portal.

An alias is a forward

An alias is not an inbox at all. It is a forwarding rule with a nice-looking address on the front. An alias has:

No password and no login of its own.
No storage. Mail passing through it is not stored at the alias.
One job: take anything sent to the alias address and deliver it into a mailbox you already have.

Use an alias when you want another address but do not want another inbox to check. Classic examples: sales@acme.com, hello@acme.com, and billing@acme.com all pointing into your main info@acme.com mailbox. One inbox, several public addresses.

You create and manage aliases on the Aliases page in the portal.

The simple rule

Ask one question: does anyone need to log in and read mail at this address?

Yes, someone logs in here → create a mailbox.
No, it should just land somewhere I already check → create an alias.

That single question resolves almost every case. If two people share an address and both need to see everything, that is still one mailbox with a shared password, or better, a mailbox plus individual mailboxes and forwarding, depending on how you work. When in doubt, start with a mailbox for anyone real and add aliases on top for the extra public-facing names.

How each affects your plan

This is the practical reason the distinction matters:

Mailboxes are what your plan counts. Your plan includes a set number of mailboxes, each with its own storage. Adding a mailbox beyond your included count is where an upgrade comes in, which you do from Plan & Billing with the Upgrade Plan button.
Aliases are free and unlimited-in-spirit. Because an alias has no inbox and no storage, it does not consume a mailbox slot. Create as many as you sensibly need.

So the money-saving move is: only create mailboxes for addresses a person actually reads, and use free aliases for everything else. A common small-business setup is one or two real mailboxes with half a dozen aliases funnelling into them.

A worked example

Say you run Acme with just yourself for now. A tidy setup:

Mailbox: you@acme.com (your real inbox, connected to your phone and laptop).
Aliases pointing to that mailbox: info@acme.com, sales@acme.com, hello@acme.com, support@acme.com.

Everyone writes to whichever address fits, and it all lands in your one inbox. Later, when you hire someone for support, you convert support@ into its own mailbox so they can log in, and leave the rest as aliases.

Next steps

Send and read your email once your addresses are set up.
How your email works for the bigger picture.
Manage everything on the Email Accounts and Aliases pages in your portal.

Not sure how to structure your addresses? Email support@mailafiniti.io and we'll suggest a setup.