addy.io hands you addresses you can invent on the spot, forwards mail from them to the inbox you actually read, and lets you switch one off when it starts attracting junk. That description fits most of this category. What sets addy.io apart is that the whole application is open source under the AGPL, and the project publishes a guide for running it on your own server.
Before anything else: we build YeyMail, a paid alias service, so addy.io is a competitor and you should weigh what follows accordingly. Every price, limit and behaviour below was read on addy.io's own pages today, and where their documentation does not answer a question we say so rather than filling the gap.
The short version is that the free plan is more generous than most people expect in one direction and much tighter in another, the paid plans are among the cheapest anywhere, and self-hosting is real but a larger commitment than the word suggests.
The AnonAddy rename, and why the old name still turns up
addy.io was AnonAddy until 9 August 2023. The rebrand post gives the reason plainly: a shorter, more recognisable name as the service picked up users internationally, with the founder noting that dropping "Anon" did not mean dropping the focus on privacy. The web application moved from app.anonaddy.com to app.addy.io and the API moved with it.
The detail that matters if you are following an old link is that the alias domains did not change. Free accounts still create shared aliases on anonaddy.me and anonaddy.com, and existing addresses kept working through the rename. A three-year-old forum thread recommending AnonAddy is recommending this service. The FAQ names Will Browning as the person behind it and describes the project as independently run and open source, with no venture funding.
The free plan, and the bandwidth model nobody expects
Free accounts get unlimited standard aliases, ten active shared-domain aliases, one recipient address, two alias domains, and ten megabytes of monthly bandwidth. The word doing the work there is bandwidth, because that, not the alias count, is the real ceiling.
Standard aliases live on a subdomain of your username, so someone signed up as johndoe can hand out anything@johndoe.anonaddy.com without creating it first; addy.io adds it to the dashboard when the first message arrives. The two alias domains a free account gets are anonaddy.me and anonaddy.com, and the addy.io subdomain in their homepage example is one of the premium domains reserved for paid plans. Shared-domain aliases are the random-looking ones on those two domains, which cannot be tied back to your account, and those are the ten.
The bandwidth figure is measured rather than estimated. The FAQ explains that Postfix works out each message's size in bytes on arrival and a counter is incremented when the message is forwarded or a reply is sent. Attachments count, blocked mail does not, and the reset is on the calendar month rather than a rolling thirty days. Their own worked example puts an average message at roughly 75KB, which makes ten megabytes about 140 messages a month, and the Lite plan's hundred megabytes close to 1,400.
Go over and the server answers delivery attempts with "552 5.2.2 Recipient address rejected: User over quota" until the month turns over or you upgrade, with a warning email at eighty per cent. The model is honest and clearly stated, but it catches people out, because most competitors meter aliases rather than volume. If your aliases only receive account emails and password resets, 140 messages a month is plenty. If one image-heavy newsletter lands in forwarded mail, the sums change quickly.
Paid tiers and current prices
Lite is listed at $1 a month billed yearly, and their pricing page shows no monthly-billing option for it. Pro is $3 a month billed yearly or $4 billed monthly. Duo and Family are Pro for more people on one subscription, each member keeping a separate account: $4.50 a month yearly or $6 monthly for two, $7.50 a month yearly or $10 monthly for five.
| Plan | Price | Shared-domain aliases | Recipients | Replies and sends per day | Monthly bandwidth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 10 | 1 | Not included | 10MB |
| Lite | $1/mo billed yearly | 50 | 5 | 50 | 100MB |
| Pro | $3/mo yearly, $4 monthly | Unlimited | 30 | 200 | Unlimited |
| Duo (2 people) | $4.50/mo yearly, $6 monthly | Pro limits, each member | Pro limits, each member | 200 each | Unlimited |
| Family (5 people) | $7.50/mo yearly, $10 monthly | Pro limits, each member | Pro limits, each member | 200 each | Unlimited |
Unlimited standard aliases appear on every tier, including free. Lite adds one custom domain, five additional usernames, five rules, the sender blocklist, failed-delivery viewing and the option to turn catch-all off. Pro raises those to twenty custom domains, twenty usernames and twenty rules, and removes the bandwidth cap. Catch-all on a domain you own is on by default rather than an add-on, so it is worth reading what catch-all actually collects before you rely on it.
Replies and sends are daily caps
Free accounts cannot reply or send from an alias at all. Attempt it and the message is not delivered and you get an email saying the feature needs a paid plan. The reasoning is on the FAQ: outbound mail from aliases attracts spam and phishing abuse, and even a small free allowance would put their sending reputation at risk for everyone.
On paid plans the allowance is a daily number rather than unlimited, and replies and new sends share it. Lite gets fifty a day, Pro gets two hundred. There is also an account-wide throttle of two hundred emails an hour through the server, alias creation is limited to ten an hour on free, twenty on Lite and fifty on Pro, and maximum message size is 25MB including attachments.
One limitation to know before committing: the FAQ states that addy.io does not provide SMTP credentials for aliases, so you cannot configure an alias as a sending account in a desktop or mobile mail client. Replying and starting new conversations both work through addresses their system generates.
Self-hosting, and what it actually costs you
This is what genuinely separates addy.io from most of the category. The application is AGPL-3.0, the source is on GitHub, there is an official Docker image, and the project publishes a full self-hosting guide.
Read that guide before deciding. It assumes a fresh Ubuntu 22.04 server you have already hardened, with Fail2ban and a firewall in place and ports 25, 22, 80 and 443 open. You install and configure Postfix, Nginx, PHP 8.2, MariaDB, Redis and Rspamd alongside the Laravel application, then set up MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, reverse DNS and Let's Encrypt certificates. The guide warns that some hosting providers block port 25 outright, and tells you to check the reputation of your server's IP address before starting.
Installation is the easy half. The ongoing half is that you now run a mail server. Deliverability is decided by Gmail and Microsoft rather than by you, and a fresh IP address starts with no reputation at all. Forwarded mail is the awkward case for sender authentication, since you are relaying someone else's message under your own domain. Updates can carry breaking changes, blacklist entries need noticing, backups need testing, and when it breaks late at night the person fixing it is you.
That suits a narrow group very well: people who already administer mail, organisations with the staff for it, and anyone whose reasons for using aliases rule out a third party holding the metadata. For everyone else, $12 a year is cheaper than one evening of debugging.
One correction to a claim that circulates widely: addy.io is not the only self-hostable alias service. SimpleLogin's backend is also open source under the AGPL, with self-hosting instructions in its repository, and Forward Email publishes a self-hosting guide of its own. There are several realistic options here, not one.
What happens if the subscription lapses
Cancel and the plan runs to the end of the billing cycle, with an email a few days before explaining what to do to avoid losing mail. After that, the FAQ lists the consequences: custom domains deactivated, additional usernames deactivated, any recipients beyond the first deactivated, paid settings reverted to defaults, aliases on paid-only domains deactivated, any shared-domain aliases beyond ten deactivated, catch-all re-enabled on your username if you had turned it off, and blocklist entries no longer blocking.
Nothing is deleted. The stated recovery window is ninety days: resubscribe inside it and all of those changes are reverted automatically. That is a fair policy and it is written down, which is more than several providers manage. What matters is what deactivated means for the sender, which is the next section, and it is the same question we walk through in what happens when you stop paying.
Silent discard versus a bounce
Their help pages are specific. Mail to a deleted alias is rejected with "550 5.1.1 Recipient address rejected: Address does not exist". Mail to an alias, custom domain or username that has been deactivated is silently discarded: not rejected, no error returned, nothing for the sender to see. The homepage puts the same choice in front of you, suggesting you delete an alias if you would rather senders get a bounce than a quiet drop.
Both behaviours are defensible and the trade-off runs both ways. A silent discard tells a probing spammer nothing, because a rejection confirms which addresses are real. A refusal at SMTP time tells a legitimate sender their message did not arrive, which matters when the alias you switched off is still on file at your bank, your insurer or a courier. Neither answer is right for every alias.
Where it bites is the lapse above. Aliases deactivated when a subscription ends sit in the silent-discard state, so during that ninety-day window mail to them disappears while the people writing to you carry on believing it landed.
addy.io vs SimpleLogin
These two are the closest comparison in the category, and people looking up "anonaddy vs simplelogin" are usually choosing between them rather than between one of them and everything else. Both are open source, both publish self-hosting instructions, both are AGPL.
The free plans differ in a revealing way. SimpleLogin's free plan lists ten aliases, one mailbox, unlimited bandwidth and replying from an alias included. addy.io's lists unlimited standard aliases, ten shared-domain aliases, one recipient, ten megabytes of bandwidth and no replying at all. If you want many addresses and receive very little mail, addy.io goes further for nothing. If you need to answer messages without paying, SimpleLogin does.
On paid plans the headline prices land in the same place. SimpleLogin Premium is $36 a year or $4 a month; addy.io Pro is $3 a month billed yearly, the same annually, or $4 billed monthly. The shape differs. SimpleLogin Premium advertises unlimited custom domains and unlimited mailboxes, while addy.io Pro caps custom domains at twenty and recipients at thirty and applies the two hundred a day sending limit. addy.io also has Lite at $1 a month billed yearly, with no SimpleLogin equivalent. SimpleLogin's plans now bundle Proton Pass; addy.io's FAQ makes a point of being independently run with no outside funding. Our fuller notes are in the SimpleLogin review.
There is also a difference on lapse. SimpleLogin's pricing page says existing aliases keep working after cancelling and you simply cannot create new ones beyond the free limit. addy.io deactivates the aliases over its limit outright, reversible for ninety days.
How it compares with what we build
We are hosted only, with no self-hosting option, so anyone who wants to run their own server should use addy.io or SimpleLogin. We also have no free tier: a seven-day trial with no card, then Starter at $0.99 a month or $9.48 a year and Plus at $4.99 a month or $47.88 a year. addy.io Pro costs less than our Plus, and their free plan costs nothing, which for a low-volume user is a real advantage we do not match.
Two differences are design choices rather than pricing. Our kill switch refuses mail at SMTP time, so a sender writing to a switched-off alias gets a rejection instead of a message accepted and dropped. And where addy.io does not issue SMTP credentials for aliases, we do, on port 587, for starting new conversations. Replying to a forwarded message needs no setup at all on our side, because the reply address is rewritten on every forward. The documented exception is Reply All: the other people on the thread are ordinary addresses in your mail app, so replies to them go out from your real account, not from the alias. If you are weighing several providers at once, our roundup of alias services covers more of them.
Who should just use addy.io
Use it if you want to self-host, now or eventually, and want the hosted service meanwhile as a way to try the same software. Use it if your forwarded volume is genuinely low and unlimited addresses on your own subdomain is the whole requirement. Use it if $12 a year is the budget and custom domain support has to fit inside it. Use it if per-recipient GPG, with the option to hide subject lines, is on your list.
Look elsewhere if you forward a lot of mail and would rather not think about megabytes, if you need an alias configured as a sending account in your mail client, or if you want a switched-off address to bounce rather than swallow mail quietly. None of those are flaws. They are decisions, stated plainly on their own pages, which is better than the category average.