What's the Difference Between an Email Domain, Account, Address, and Alias? (2024)

They’re all related but different.

by Leo A. Notenboom

Email comes with its own set of terminology. I'll review how email addresses, accounts, domains, and aliases relate.

What's the Difference Between an Email Domain, Account, Address, and Alias? (1)

Based on the questions I get, it’s clear that the differences between email domains, accounts, addresses, and aliases are commonly confused.

It doesn’t help that the industry uses the terms inconsistently.

Most folks understand domains more or less, but the difference between an email address and an email account? That’s not always clear.

Email domains, accounts, addresses, and aliases

Email terminology can be confusing. An email domain (e.g., “askleo.com”) represents an organization. An email address (e.g., “leo@askleo.com”) directs messages to a specific mailbox. An email account is the mailbox and its associated folders. Aliases are different addresses delivering to the same mailbox.

Domains and servers

You probably already know what a domain is. “Askleo.com” is a domain, as is “amazon.com”, “microsoft.com”, and “facebook.com”. Those represent businesses or organizations on the internet. Usually, they have a website associated with them, though it’s not technically required.

The domain is the address of our office building. The postal service delivers all the mail for anyone in that building to the back door, where they drop it in a big lump. That’s the equivalent of the internet handing off all email addressed to that domain to the mail server for that domain.

A server is a computer system on which the domain’s services, like the website and email, live. It transmits email messages between email providers, webmail services, email software, and more.

The mail server in our building is the team of hard-working mail clerks who pick up the mail from the back door, carry it down to the basem*nt, and sort it.

All the internet knows is “mail for this domain is handled by that server”.

Accounts

An account is where email sent to you lands — a mailbox and any associated folders within — and from where you can send email.1 It’s a relationship between you and your email provider.

An account is equivalent to the physical mailbox of each employee in our building.

Just as a physical mailbox has a lock and key, to access your email account, you must supply your account ID and password to access your email mailbox. An account ID may be:

The email address (i.e. “example@gmail.com”)
The first part of the email address (i.e. “example”)
Something completely different (i.e. “user141235”)

Any of those identify the account, but only the first is an email address.

This is one reason that when you log in to most desktop email programs, you’re asked for both your account ID and your email address; they may be different. Years ago, for example, I was “user123123” to my ISP, but they provided me with an email address “something@randomisp.com”.

Addresses and aliases

An email address — say “leo@randomisp.com” — is the name of a mailbox. The domain — “randomisp.com” — identifies the server that handles the email. The name part — “leo@” — defines the specific email account to receive that email.

Each employee in our office building might go by several names; each of those is an address or alias. I might go by Leo, Leonard, or Chief Technology Officer, and the mail clerks know to deliver all the mail addressed to any of those to my single mailbox.

An email alias is another email address that lands in the same email account.For example, email sent to leo@askleo.com and email sent to sales@askleo.com — two different email addresses — ends up in the same mailbox. They are two aliases of a single account.

Extending the metaphor

Your mail program is like the clerk who takes the mail out of your box and delivers it to your desk for you to read.

Perhaps the mail clerk recognizes and automatically throws away junk mail; that would be equivalent to your spam filter.

If mail comes to the building for someone who doesn’t work there, the clerks mark it as “unknown/return to sender”. Email systems often do the same thing; it’s called a bounce.

Do this

Every so often, you hear someone proclaim that email is dead. Far from it; email is alive and well and the backbone of digital commerce, information flow, and person-to-person connection.

Hopefully, understanding how domains, accounts, and addresses relate will help you better appreciate the digital magic that gets your message from point to point. It can also enable you to use some features, like multiple addresses and accounts, to manage your digital information flow.

If nothing else, now you understand why, when configuring your email program, it asks for both email address and account. They’re different, yet related, things.

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