Forwarding Email Address or Email Box

When you need to set up email for yourself and others in your organization, one question will quickly come up: Do you want a forwarding email address or an email box? A forwarding email address simply forwards emails sent to it to another designated email address. With an email box, you have a separate place to manage email.

Pros and Cons

Forwarding Email Address Pros

• The email sent to a forwarding email simply appears in the regular email.
• There is no need to check a separate box for email.
• You can print business cards with the forwarding email address on them.
• You can set up a signature on emails you send displaying the forwarding email address.
• Forwarding email addresses are less expensive ($5 a year from Hover) and free on most hosting plans.

Forwarding Email Address Cons

• With a forwarding email address, you are unable to send email from the email address. In most cases, your customers will not notice that you are sending from another address.

Email Box Pros

• You can send email from your email box.
• If you are willing to check email every day, a separate box can help you separate your work email from your person email.

Email Box Cons

• While you can import email into an email client, in my experience this is difficult for most of my clients, which means that they need to check a second email box each day.
• Email boxes require that the domain owner pay for space to store the emails. For example, an email box from Hover.com costs $30 per year and more if you need a lot of space to store your email addresses.

The Bottom Line

For small organizations that use volunteer or part-time contract help, I strongly recommend that you set up forwarding email instead of an email box. If the employees work full-time or on a daily basis, then an email box is a better solution.