Fastmail aliases and rules: organise a small business inbox

Create a small address register

Record the address, purpose, owner, receiving destination, sending name and review date. For example, the studio owner might manage hello@ and accounts@, while a future assistant receives a separate personal account. Keep the register in a private working document rather than publishing internal routing details on the website.

Use names that clients can recognise. If accounts@ receives billing conversations, give it an appropriate display name and signature rather than the personal nickname used for family mail. A role address helps continuity when responsibilities change; it does not create confidentiality on its own.

Set up an alias and one clear delivery action

In Settings → My email addresses, select Add address, choose Create an alias, enter the address and select the intended domain. Save its delivery and composing choices. An administrator creating an address for another user works through Users & Sharing → Aliases. Fastmail says a new alias can take up to 15 minutes to take effect. See the alias setup guide.

For accounts@, a simple starting point is delivery to a Billing folder, leaving unrelated mail in Inbox. Avoid adding forwarding, deletion and several overlapping rules during the same first test. You want to know which change produced the result.

Fastmail’s My email addresses screen identifies types such as Username, Alias and Shared alias. It also lets you edit an address’s delivery settings and sender identity. Use it to check the address actually created, rather than inferring a separate mailbox from the fact that an address appears in a list. See the address management reference.

Use folders to make work visible

Create a small folder structure, such as Enquiries, Billing and Suppliers, through Settings → Folders. Fastmail supports nested folders and also offers labels; choose the approach that helps you find work consistently. The folder settings include advanced options such as a default composing address and auto-purge. Leave automatic deletion out of an initial workflow until you have an intentional retention policy. See the folder guide.

Design folders around actions you really take. A folder called Billing should have a regular review habit, because moving a message out of Inbox does not mean its invoice has been dealt with. A large tree organised by every client, supplier and month is worthwhile only if someone can maintain it.

Add rules only where the address action is insufficient

Fastmail processes blocked senders and spam handling before address actions, and then rules. Rules run in their listed order. In Settings → Filters & Rules, Create rule lets you choose conditions, preview matching messages, select actions and save. Conditions can require all matches or any match. See the rule documentation.

For the studio, an editorial example is a recipient condition matching accounts@, with a folder action for Billing. If an address action already does exactly that, another rule adds little. A separate supplier-specific rule may be useful if it handles a different task. Name each rule for what it does so a future operator can understand it.

Be careful with conditions assembled from a real message: the sender, recipient or subject may be narrower or broader than you intended. Preview ordinary rules with several relevant messages before saving. Start with a reversible action such as filing, rather than deleting or marking every matching item read. Repeat the test after reordering rules.

Choose shared delivery or shared visibility deliberately

A shared address and a shared folder solve different coordination questions. Fastmail documents sharing a folder through Settings → Folders → advanced preferences → Team sharing, selecting users and permissions. The owner can choose whether one person’s read action marks a message read for everyone or whether each person keeps an individual unread state. Shared messages count against the folder owner’s mail quota. See sharing mail.

For two people covering enquiries, first decide whether they should receive separate copies or work on the same shared set of messages. Then establish a handover convention: who handles a conversation, who covers absences and where the final response is visible. Read/unread status alone is a poor substitute for explicit responsibility.

Separate copies can suit a low-volume announcement where both people only need awareness. A shared folder can suit a small team wanting to inspect the same correspondence. If several agents must claim tickets, avoid duplicate replies and report response times, a dedicated helpdesk may fit the operating model better. Validate the required features in that product rather than treating extra aliases as a ticketing system.

Give each person their own login rather than sharing a password. Fastmail administrators manage users through Users & Sharing. Its user-management documentation also explains that administrator visibility and privacy settings need a deliberate choice. Review those settings with the person joining, rather than promising that an ordinary user account is automatically invisible to every administrator. See managing users.

Use catch-all and plus addressing for the right reasons

A catch-all receives mail sent to otherwise unmatched addresses at a custom domain. An explicitly created alias takes precedence over it. This can help catch an unexpected address, but it also means you will receive mail for addresses you never deliberately issued. Consider the workload before enabling it on a public business domain. See catch-all behaviour.

For a permanent public address such as hello@, an explicit alias gives you a visible entry in the register and a deliberate target. A catch-all is not a reason to skip ownership checks. If a specific address is retired, test the actual response with your catch-all configuration rather than assuming deletion always stops delivery.

Plus addressing can be useful for registrations: for example, owner+suppliers@example.com still reaches the owner, and a matching folder name can trigger filing. Some forms reject plus signs. Sending from a plus or subdomain address requires setting up that sending identity, and custom-domain subdomain sending needs appropriate DNS. See the plus and subdomain guide.

A plus tag is an organisation aid, not a secret or proof that a particular business leaked an address. Other people can recognise or remove a tag. Use a consistent public role address when clarity matters more than tracking which registration used it.

Keep the scope human, and review the system as it grows

Fastmail’s terms require keeping login details confidential and exclude programmatically generated outbound mail to addresses outside the customer account. A tidy role-address system is therefore not permission to turn the service into a shop’s receipt engine, a newsletter sender or a high-volume automation relay. Use a permitted service for those tasks. See the current terms.

Review the address register when someone joins or leaves, when responsibilities change and when a folder becomes a dumping ground. Confirm that important contacts use a monitored address. Keep rules you can explain; remove duplication after testing, and preserve messages according to your actual retention needs.

Fastmail is worth assessing when you value several useful identities, a focused inbox and practical organisation for a small operation. Start with one real workflow, prove delivery and reply behaviour, then expand. If your domain is not connected yet, follow our custom-domain email setup guide. If you instead need ticket assignments, extensive automation or a broader office suite, compare those needs before buying more mailbox users.

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