A week ago, the wonderful folks at 1Password announced a new feature: automatic generation of email aliases when creating a new vault entry. As an user of SimpleLogin, I am already familiar with the concept of using unique aliases for each website. It's the same functionality that 1Password and Fastmail announced, except that generating the alias doesn't require a visit to the email provider's website.
Fastmail vs SimpleLogin
I see how this is helpful for the common user, but I am also slightly sad that smaller players like SimpleLogin and Anonaddy get left out in these corporate partnerships. From a quick comparison between Fastmail's alias service and the smaller players, the best choices are the latter ones. For some context, SimpleLogin does not have any limits on the number of aliases that I can generate or the number of reply addresses (address that you send an email to, so that SimpleLogin sends out that email to the final destination from the actual alias address), while Fastmail limits them to 600 aliases and 500 sending identities (equivalent to SimpleLogin's reply address).
In my 2 years of being a SimpleLogin customer, I have generated over 1200 aliases and I guess, about 50% reply addresses. All of that is available at a fantastic cost of 30 USD per year.
An image from my SimpleLogin dashboard that shows the number of aliases that I have generated, incoming emails, outbound responses and blocked emails.
Except one outage, the service has been spectacular so far and support is great. The founder, Son, often responds to my emails, welcomes feedback and sometimes includes users in future product discussions. If you are looking for a privacy-respecting email alias generator, look no beyond SimpleLogin. This is not a sponsored post. I am just a happy user.
SimpleLogin is also open-source and can be self-hosted.
Final words
I am not a Fastmail user today, but I hear great things about their service. I wouldn't be switching to them though, as my existing mailboxes on WordPress.com Professional Email and Migadu haven't seen any issues so far. Plus, Fastmail is based in Australia which is known for poor encryption laws.
I love that 1Password is headed in a great direction with extensions. First they announced privacy-respecting, unique cards for online transactions with Privacy.com. And now, this partnership with Fastmail. Can't wait to see what the future holds.