Email Alias Creator: Does Such a Thing Exist?

January 25, 2008 10:55 AM

Are there any free (and non-sketchy) services out there that would allow me to create an e-mail alias that would re-direct to 30 people?

I realize this is a huge shot in the dark, but, then, isn't that what AskMe is for?

Google searches yield nothing.

posted by hazelshade to computers & internet (10 answers total)

Am slightly confuse. You want to send something along the lines of an email newsletter to a group of people without revealing to each member of that group which other people are getting the email or what their addresses are?

That's easily done in Outlook. Just create a group with all the emails you want to send it to. Then send it to yourself and BCC the group. I get emails like that all the time. No service required.

Or am I completely missing what you want to do?
posted by Naberius at 10:59 AM on January 25, 2008

I think you mean having an address that forwards to 30 other addresses? Depends on the email system...
posted by Burhanistan at 11:01 AM on January 25, 2008

Do you just want to create a "mailing list"?
Try Google Groups or Yahoo Groups. Both of them have mechanisms for mass-subscribing people without their intervention.
posted by jozxyqk at 11:04 AM on January 25, 2008

make a gmail account and setup a filter that forwards all emails.
posted by DJWeezy at 11:04 AM on January 25, 2008

What you want is an announcement-only mailing list or listserv, not an email alias. Hence your Google troubles.

Dreamhost will provide free hosting including really good listserv support for free if you're a nonprofit. I think most ordinary folks who need to do this just do it through Yahoo, although that can require a little account hoop-jumping.
posted by bcwinters at 11:05 AM on January 25, 2008

Oh, so incoming emails to address X get automatically forwarded to 30 different people? Outlook can do that as well, with a kind of built in scripting system that sets rules about what to do with incoming messages. It's really no more complicated than the gambit system in Final Fantasy XII, but it can be a bit twonky sometimes.

And I don't actually know whether the OP is using Outlook. If you really want an external service, I instantly popped up a list of them searching for email redirect in Google.

So again, perhaps I'm not understanding the problem.
posted by Naberius at 11:06 AM on January 25, 2008

Yep, Burhanistan has it right -- i want to create an email address that will forward on to 30 other addresses. Doesn't matter if they know who the other recipients are or not. Gmail might be an option...
posted by hazelshade at 11:08 AM on January 25, 2008

I use Gmail's Groups feature. You do have to enter the 30 in your Contacts list, but from then on, you just type the name of the group in the TO line in Gmail and voila.
posted by GaelFC at 11:49 AM on January 25, 2008

It all depends on whether you want a way that forwards onto 30 other addresses that only you can use, or whether you want a system that will take an email from anyone, check they're authorised, and forward it on to the 30 people.

The first is just client-side; i.e. you set up the 30 addresses in gmail or outlook or thunderbird or pretty much any other email client, and mass-mail, using BCC if you want them not to know each others addresses.


If it's the latter, i.e. a system that on receipt to a particular address will forward email to 30 people regardless of who sent it in the first place (assuming they're authorised) that's more complicated as effectively you need a mailing-list server (i.e. listserv) running 24 hours a day waiting to receive and forward the email.
Yahoo groups is the easiest way to do this, by far; people don't need a yahoo account for them to send and receive email via the group, though they do if they want to sign up to use other features.
Setting up your own listserv is not for the faint hearted, but with a decent ISP to the bulk of the work, it's certainly possible. Most webhosts will not provide a listserv though.
posted by ArkhanJG at 1:00 PM on January 25, 2008

Also (to aid in your searching), the setup you're looking for -- where anything mailed to a single address by anyone ends up going to multiple addresses -- is often called a "reflector."
posted by lorimer at 10:42 PM on January 25, 2008