Which private email generator should you use?
For hiding your address, any forwarder does the job: SimpleLogin, Firefox Relay, Addy.io, or Hide My Email on Apple devices. They all pass the mail on to your real inbox. If you want it kept out of your inbox too, you need one that gives you a mailbox instead.
What a private email generator does
It gives each site its own address, so your real one never goes into a signup form. If that site sells its list or gets breached, what leaks is an address you can switch off.
Most of them forward, and a few keep the mail instead. That decides where everything you signed up for ends up, and it’s the thing to choose on.
The four you’ll see recommended, and ours
| Mail goes to | RSS reader | Free tier | Reply from it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SimpleLogin | Your inbox | No | 10 addresses | Yes |
| Firefox Relay | Your inbox | No | 5 addresses | Paid only |
| Addy.io | Your inbox | No | 10, more on a subdomain | Paid only |
| Hide My Email | Your inbox | No | None, needs iCloud+ | Yes |
| Rovatrove | Stays in the app | Yes | None | Yes |
Of the three with a free plan, SimpleLogin is the one that lets you reply from the address without paying. Addy.io is the most generous on volume if a personal subdomain suits you, though the free plan caps mail at 10 MB a month. Hide My Email is the smoothest option on an iPhone and not an option on Android at all.
Check each provider’s own pricing page before you commit. These numbers change, and comparison sites copy each other’s old ones.
What the forwarders have in common
Forwarding protects the address. Every one of these hands the mail on to the inbox you already use, so signing up for a dozen things behind a dozen addresses still leaves a dozen senders in your inbox.
Addresses on one domain shared by every user are also the easiest for a signup form to refuse, since blocking that domain blocks all of them at once. It’s a common reason a generated address gets rejected.
And they stop at delivery. None of the four is somewhere to read anything, so a newsletter you signed up for privately still turns up as one more email among the receipts and the work threads.
Before you pick one
Ask whether you’ll ever need to reply. A support thread or a refund request goes much better from the same address you signed up with, and only some plans allow it.
Ask what happens when you’re finished with an address. Switching it off should stop that sender for good. It also tells you something: if mail ever shows up at an address you gave to one company, you know which one passed it on.
The other kind: a generator that gives you a mailbox
The address can be a real mailbox that keeps what it receives. The site sends as normal, confirmation links and login codes arrive, and none of it reaches your personal account. You read it somewhere else, when you want to.
A few RSS readers now issue addresses this way. We’re one of them.
Where Rovatrove fits
Rovatrove is a real mailbox wrapped in an RSS reader, and the reader comes first: a curated library of blogs, newsletters, podcasts and YouTube channels to browse by topic, all landing in one feed. When a site asks for an email, it generates an address for that one site and fills in the form for you. The mail arrives in the app next to the blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels you follow, you can reply from it, and your personal inbox is never in the chain.
Each service gets its own address on our domain. When you’re done with one you retire it: anything sent afterwards is dropped, and the address is never given to anyone else.
The addresses are part of the paid plan. The free tier is the reader, with five feeds.
Questions people ask
Which private email generator should you use?
For hiding your address, any forwarder does the job: SimpleLogin, Firefox Relay, Addy.io, or Hide My Email on Apple devices. They all pass the mail on to your real inbox. If you want it kept out of your inbox too, you need one that gives you a mailbox instead.
Is there a free private email generator?
Yes. SimpleLogin gives you 10 addresses for free, Firefox Relay gives 5, and Addy.io gives 10 on its shared domain plus as many as you like on a personal subdomain. All three forward the mail to the inbox you already have.
Can you reply from a generated address?
On SimpleLogin, yes, including on the free plan. Firefox Relay and Addy.io keep replies for paying users. Hide My Email lets you reply from iCloud Mail, which needs a paid iCloud+ plan.
Does a private email generator keep emails out of your inbox?
Most don't. A forwarder hides your address from the sender and then delivers everything to your normal inbox. Keeping the mail out needs an address that is its own mailbox.
Will websites accept a generated address?
Usually. The ones most often refused are addresses on a single domain shared by every user of a service, because a site can block that one domain and catch all of them at once.
Is an inbox that expires after ten minutes the same thing?
No. Those are fine for reading one message once. They are widely blocked at signup and gone before the second email arrives, so they fail for anything you plan to log into again.