Add an alias to Mail on iOS

I use a mail forwarding service called Pobox (Pobox.com) to do spam filtering and mail forwarding to my "real" addresses. On the macOS equipment, it's easy to add [email protected] to the "From" line on an email, so that the recipient sees that address and then responds to that address if they click "Reply." But on my iPhone, the only two "From" options are my real address from my ISP and the icloud.com address from Apple.

I've looked and not found a way to add another "From" option to Mail on iOS. Is it possible, and how do I do that, please?

Jake, I know you have this service and you've spoken about several times.

I was just wondering: on your Mac, is that Pobox "account" listed as an account in its own right (like Gmail, Yahoo would be)? I don't know how it works.

If yes, then would you not have to add it to iOS as an account with, presumably, its own email address and PW?

Pardon my ignorance on how Pobox works.

Ian

I think, Ian, the challenge is that Pobox is simply a mail forwarding service. They are not a mail provider. Basically, I give out my email at [email protected], they have my real email address on file and whatever comes into the pobox address is filtered for spam and then sent on to my email provider. So there is no smtp server associated with them. So there isn't anything set up in Mail on the iPhone for them as an account.

But your post triggered me to think about creating an account, just point it to nothing, or maybe to my real email provider, just to get the alias into the system, maybe then it will be available? I think I'll try that. Thanks for the suggestion!

OK, adding a new account with the alias doesn't work. There is only ONE place to put in the account name, and that has to be the login name for the mail service, not the alias. Unlike the desktop version of Mail, the iOS version doesn't have a separate email address option. So I guess I'm stuck. What this means is that I cannot respond to email from my iPad or iPhone without giving up my email address. Sure does diminish the usefulness of those devices. I wonder if an Android or Windows device can handle the situation?

Most email clients will allow you to choose the from address if you have multiple accounts setup, but traditionally do not allow you to set it to arbitrary things. In my MacMail for example I have a few couple of my GMail accounts, my work account and my iCloud account set up and when I compose or reply to email I get a drop down to choose from any of those accounts. I cannot, however, just set the from address to [email protected]. You might be using a different application that does give you that flexibility.

I used to use mail forwarding services like these for a long time, but you are an outlier on this and these apps are designed for the common denominator use whereby you add an account and that account has an email address and you will use that email address to send/receive emails. In general I've found GMail's spam filter to be VERY good and I don't get anything bad at all coming through..

Ashwin, thanks but frankly I don't use ANYTHING of the Google family. It's bad enough to give away my email address, but giving the content to Google is not going to happen from my end.

What's curious is that the Apple Mail product on my MBP works just fine for the alias, but not on the iOS version. In Mail on macOS, there is a specific location in the Account setting where you can put a return address that can be different from the login email address for the smtp server. There is also a place in the iOS version to allow that as well, but when you compose an email there isn't an option that then displays that address, or use it in the outgoing email. So Apple knows this is a function that people use, but for some reason it doesn't work in iOS.

As for being an "outlier" on using pobox, they have sufficient numbers of customers to make it work financially, so I'm not that much an outlier.

I don't know if you saw this on POBOX.com, https://pobox.com/helpspot/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=132. It is with an older version of iOS, but someone may be able to figure out a workaround.

Bob, for a while I thought you had it, but it doesn't work. At the end, when I tried to move to the final step, Mail reported that the IMAP account was already created and would NOT let me enter it again with a different SMTP server. Nice try, though. I think I'm stuck with it. So, no sending mail on my iPhone or iPad.

Do you already have an email account setup in iOS Mail? Maybe delete all accounts and set this one up first?

I'm giving up on it. Thanks for the try, though.