Free email forwarding services?

[SideshowBob]

IIWY I'd open a free account somewhere and use pop/imap retrieval.

If someone tells you on a forum they want to contact you immediately you can log-in or force a retrieval, otherwise I don't see why the delay would matter all that much.

[TenFour]

If someone tells you on a forum they want to contact you immediately you can log-in or force a retrieval, otherwise I don't see why the delay would matter all that much.

I've encountered many reasons when the POP3 delay with Gmail is a huge hassle. For example, when you are trying to do a password reset, or in some cases when getting a security code, or when changing an email address, or when inserting the password in a new site and they want you to verify it. In any case, if you just happen to be on your phone it is not always easy to log into the other service and force a retrieval, and some services (like Gmail) sometimes won't do it.

The most reliable forwarding service that also includes an SMTP server for sending reliably is Pobox.com. Their basic level is $20 per year. I don't see what the free services offer over just using a domain name host that provides free email forwarding. Some of the very inexpensive ones provide it like Porkbun and Namesilo, along with many others at all price levels.

[SideshowBob]

Originally Posted by TenFour

I've encountered many reasons when the POP3 delay with Gmail is a huge hassle.

None of them seem particularly relevant to the OP's use case.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

...
The purpose would be to be able to post, in forums I am member of, an email address which allows members to email me, without exposing my real email address...

For this purpose I have been using spamgourmet (free) and Sneakemail (paid) for almost twenty years. Both very reliable. I stopped using Sneakemail because I thought it wasn't worth the $24 per year (now it's $36). I changed all my sneakemail addresses to different subdomains in my domain. If I hadn't become addicted to spamgourmet (with their xoxy.net domain) I probably would have dedicated a domain for this purpose (register a domain for for a few $$ a year and use different subdomains for disposable addresses. a subdomain can be "disposed of" by creating fake dns records, or by setting a catchall address to discard all email).

[forwardemail]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

This service silly. They require you to put destination address into DNS records.
How stupid this is!

Hi there - that was only for free plans, and as of July 2024 we now allow you to encrypt your DNS records (even on the free plan).

See https://forwardemail.net/encrypt

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

This service silly. They require you to put destination address into DNS records.
How stupid this is!

What's stupid about it?
IMO this is the way email should have been working (almost) from the beginning.
IMO the foolish thing is the "localpart@domain.tld" structure of the email address. It belongs in history, and should have been replaced by a simpler paradigm without the @ sign at least 3 decades ago.
About 5 decades ago (1972) Ray Tomlinson extended the messaging functionality between users on the same host to users between users on different hosts in a network. To achieve this he used the @ sign so a messge could be sent to user@host (where "user" is the username and "host" is the hostname). There were no periods back then. A bit later networks were connected and became subnetworks of a bigger network, so hosts on other subnetworks would be addressed as host.subnet and a user at a different subnetwork became user@host.subnet.
Then about 3 decades ago all of this was virtualized in the domain name system (DNS), so email addresses became user@domain.tld or user @subdomain .domain.tld. And the sad thing is that when things were virtualized in the DNS the people who did it kept the @ sign, instead of making the user just user.domain.tld or user.subdomain.domain.tld, which would be just as good for the purpose of sending email, but actually could have been much better.
Why better? because today if you have a domain and you want to capitalize on it by selling email addresses in it to people you have to handle all of your clients' email traffic: the least you have to do is have a way to receive all their incoming email and forward it to where they read it. If an email address was just a subdomain all you'd have to do is set up an MX record for the subdomain and forget about it. So you could say charge 20$ upfront for 10 years use of an email address, and for most of your users this would mean setting up an MX record and forget about it, or perhaps change the MX record when the user changes hosting provider, which would not be often for most users. And you could also setup A records or NS records for your users and charge extra for this. So I think the email world would have looked different if the @ sign was ditched, and email addresses would be just subdomains recorded in the DNS.

[RFK]

Originally Posted by hadaso

What's stupid about it?

Privacy issue

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by RFK

Privacy issue

It's not much different from DNS records of a personal domain. Email addresses are just routing instructions. It's not name and street address.

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by hadaso

It's not much different from DNS records of a personal domain. Email addresses are just routing instructions. It's not name and street address.

please read their docs before answer here.

[Bamb0]

Originally Posted by forwardemail

Hi there - that was only for free plans, and as of July 2024 we now allow you to encrypt your DNS records (even on the free plan).

Welcome to EMD


Thank you for giving an update on your services

[trikotret]

I am using gmailify.com for $6.99 a year. It's only for Gmail. Works great so far for a month. Here's more info about it. https://youtu.be/dHFZI9tpZGc?si=hE0nKjGYWKxIdy9i