Why would a sole trader or small business need two email addresses? Simple. If you have a website you will want an email address on it so people can contact you. The problem is that as soon as you publish an email address on the web, spammers — both people and software robots — will pick it up and use it to send you spam. It could be simple business introductions, gobbledygook, dubious offshore companies offering their services, or worse. Either way, spam is annoying and it wastes your time.
Email address #1 — your web-facing address
By setting up a generic email just for your website — such as info@, sales@, or bookings@ — you can keep these incoming messages somewhat separate from your normal inbox (depending on how you set up your email software). This means you won’t be bombarded with spam throughout the day. You can simply check this web-facing inbox once a day, trash the spam all at once, and respond to genuine enquiries.
There’s another practical benefit too: if the spam ever becomes too much to bear, you can change the web email address without needing to notify all your personal contacts, customers, family, and friends — because they use your primary address, which is explained below.
Email address #2 — your primary address
Your other email address should be your primary one, and this is the address you print on your business card. Commonly this is your name — such as john@ or j.doe@ — but it can be anything you like. By not publishing it on the web, you will receive far less spam because you are sharing it only with real-world contacts: suppliers, customers, prospects, family, and friends.
TIP: When you respond to a genuine enquiry that comes in through your web email address (e.g. info@), remember to reply using your primary email address (e.g. john@). This moves the conversation across to your protected inbox and ensures future messages from that customer come straight to you rather than sitting in the general web inbox.
Getting set up
Setting up an additional email address with your existing hosting is generally straightforward. At Blue Platypus, we won’t charge you to set up another email address or two — so if you want to change the way you handle email, just drop us a line and we’ll get it sorted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why use two email addresses?
One published address absorbs the spam that comes with being visible on a website, while your real working address stays clean. Both arrive in the same inbox, so it costs you nothing in convenience.
Does publishing my email address on my website cause spam?
Yes. Automated harvesters scrape addresses from web pages continuously. A contact form, or a published address that forwards to your real one, avoids exposing the address you actually work from.
Should I use a contact form instead of publishing an address?
Use both. A form suits most enquiries and keeps your address off the page, but some people simply want to email you — and a business with no visible contact address reads as less trustworthy.
How do I set this up?
Create an alias or forwarder on your domain — most hosting and Google Workspace do this in a couple of clicks — and point it at your main mailbox. If it ever attracts too much spam, replace the alias without touching your real address.
