Good morning. It’s まさきん.
As the number of online accounts for your family grows, managing them gets harder. Here’s the short version: the fix is simple.
Combine a single email address with aliases using the ”+” plus sign. That alone can make managing things a lot easier. Today I want to walk through how this works and how to actually use it.
Why family accounts get hard to manage
As you have more kids, your mobile lines and subscription contracts pile up too. Before long, you lose track of which email address is registered to which service.
One option is to set up a separate email address for each family member. But creating a brand-new address for everyone is its own kind of hassle.
As a marketer, I can’t help but look at this from a different angle. Isn’t this really a problem of identifier design, tags, in other words?
If every notification lands in one mailbox, it gets hard to tell things apart. But managing too many separate accounts is its own headache too, since it means more passwords to manage and more inboxes to check.
The email alias trick: the ”+” notation
Many email services have a handy feature built in. You can add ”+” followed by any string of characters right before the ”@” in your email address, and mail still lands in the same mailbox.
For example, say you have the address example@gmail.com. Even if you add something to the end, like example+kids@gmail.com, it still arrives in the same inbox.
Using this trick means you don’t need to create new email accounts. You can set up a distinguishable address for each service, or for each family member, while keeping a single inbox. That way, you never have to hop between multiple mailboxes.
Practical ways to use it
Here’s how we actually use this in my own household.
| Use case | How we use it |
|---|---|
| Contracts under a child’s name | Use an alias with the child’s name or relationship as the sign-up email address |
| A monitoring line for an elderly parent | Set up a dedicated alias for a parent’s contract so related notifications are easy to check together |
| Sorting by service type | Keep separate aliases for categories like mobile, finance, or subscriptions |
One of the best parts of this approach is that you can tell at a glance, later on, which account a given email is a notification for. Just by looking at the address, you know.
It also makes searching and setting up filters in your inbox much easier. You spend less time hunting around wondering “where did that notification go?” In my case, I feel like this cut down on that hassle quite a bit.
Organizing your addresses this way comes with an unexpected bonus, too: you end up with a clear overview of all your family’s lines in one place. This actually gave me the push to line up and review our family’s rate plans as well.
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Things to watch out for
It’s a convenient trick. That said, there are a few things worth keeping in mind.
- Not every service supports it: Some services don’t accept email addresses that include the ”+” notation. I’d recommend testing it on the sign-up screen before you commit to a contract.
- An alias isn’t a forwarding setup: An alias just means mail lands in the same inbox. It doesn’t forward to a different family member’s mailbox. It’s important to make sure the actual account holder can check it.
- Be careful with procedures that require identity verification: Some procedures require confirming the identity of the account holder. In those cases, check in advance whether the account holder can actually receive things like verification codes sent to the alias.
Wrap-up
As your family’s lines and services pile up, keeping track of contract details tends to get complicated no matter what. But by using email aliases, you don’t have to create new email accounts. You can make things easy to tell apart, both by family member and by service.
In my own household, cleaning up our family’s lines is what got me to adopt this approach. I feel like it’s cut down on the management hassle quite a bit.
Some of you may already be running multiple lines for your family. Others might be thinking about reviewing your family’s contracts together with Rakuten Mobile going forward. If that’s you, it’s worth considering a management approach like this before you sign up.
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