Everything you need to know about PicaMail. Can't find your answer? Reach out to [email protected].
PicaMail is a free email alias and forwarding service. You create aliases (like [email protected]) and give those out instead of your real email address. When someone sends an email to your alias, PicaMail forwards it to your real inbox instantly.
If an alias starts getting spam, you deactivate or delete it - your real address stays clean. PicaMail does not store your email content. Emails are forwarded in memory and never written to disk.
With PicaMail, you do not need to create aliases in advance. Any email sent to [email protected] is automatically forwarded to your inbox.
Signing up for a newsletter? Use [email protected]. Buying something? Use [email protected]. The alias is created automatically the first time it receives an email. You can then manage it from your dashboard - deactivate it, add rules, or delete it.
Standard aliases use your personal subdomain ([email protected]). They are unique to you and support on-the-fly creation. Anyone can see you are using PicaMail, but each user has their own isolated namespace.
Shared domain aliases use a common domain (like [email protected]). They look like a regular email address and do not reveal that you are using PicaMail or what your username is. The trade-off is that shared domain aliases must be created manually from the dashboard and are more limited on the free tier.
Yes, with a Pro subscription. You add your domain in the PicaMail dashboard, configure a few DNS records (MX records for mail routing and a TXT record for verification), and then any email sent to any address on your domain is forwarded to your inbox.
For example, if you own example.com, you can receive emails at [email protected], [email protected], or anything else - all forwarded to your real inbox. On-the-fly alias creation works with custom domains too.
When someone sends an email to your alias and it arrives in your inbox, you can reply directly. PicaMail rewrites the "From" header so your reply appears to come from the alias, not your real email address. The recipient never sees your real email.
This works automatically - just hit reply in your email client as you normally would. PicaMail handles the routing behind the scenes.
Send-from-alias lets you start a brand-new conversation from any of your aliases, not just reply to existing threads. From the PicaMail dashboard (or the mobile app), you compose an email and choose which alias to send from.
The recipient sees the alias as the sender. This is useful when you want to reach out to someone - like a Craigslist seller or a business inquiry - without revealing your real email address.
On the free tier, each alias forwards to one email address. With a Pro subscription, you can add multiple forwarding recipients per alias.
For example, you could forward [email protected] to three different team members simultaneously. There is no extra charge per recipient on Pro - it is included in the subscription.
You can add your public GPG/OpenPGP key in your PicaMail account settings. Once added, PicaMail encrypts all forwarded emails with your public key before sending them to your inbox.
This means that even if someone intercepts the email between PicaMail's servers and your inbox, they cannot read it. Only you can decrypt it with your private key. PicaMail supports both inline PGP and PGP/MIME formats.
To set it up: go to Settings, paste your public key in the GPG Key field, and save. All forwarded emails will be encrypted from that point forward.
This is critically important. When PicaMail forwards an email to your inbox, your email provider (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) sees PicaMail's servers as the sender. If you mark the email as spam, you are telling your email provider that PicaMail itself is a spammer.
This damages PicaMail's IP sending reputation and can cause forwarded emails to land in the spam folder for all PicaMail users - not just you. It takes weeks to recover from reputation damage.
What to do instead:
When you delete your PicaMail account, all your data is permanently removed immediately. This includes:
Emails sent to your old aliases will bounce with a "user not found" response. Account deletion is irreversible - there is no recovery period or "undo" option. Make sure to export your data first if you need a record of your aliases.
If you cancel Pro, changes take effect at the end of your current billing period. Here is what happens:
Your account, alias history, and all metadata are preserved. You can resubscribe at any time to restore everything.
Bandwidth is the total size of all emails forwarded through your aliases in a calendar month. This includes email headers, body text, and attachments.
For example, if you receive 100 emails averaging 50 KB each, that is roughly 5 MB of bandwidth. A newsletter with images might be 200-500 KB per email. Plain text emails are typically under 10 KB.
The free tier includes a generous bandwidth allowance that covers normal personal use. Pro users get significantly higher limits suitable for heavy use and custom domains. Bandwidth resets on the first of each month.
Rate limits prevent abuse and ensure fair usage for everyone. On the free tier, you can receive up to a set number of forwarded emails per hour and per day. Pro users get higher limits.
If you hit a rate limit, incoming emails are temporarily queued and delivered once the limit resets. You will not lose any emails - they are just delayed.
Outbound sending (reply-from-alias and send-from-alias) has separate, stricter rate limits to prevent spam abuse. These limits are clearly displayed in your dashboard so you always know where you stand.
PicaMail uses multiple layers of spam prevention on both inbound and outbound email:
PicaMail also maintains feedback loops with major email providers to quickly identify and act on abuse.
Yes. PicaMail offers browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. The extension lets you generate a new alias with one click whenever you encounter an email signup form. It auto-fills the alias into the form field.
You can also manage aliases, deactivate them, or view forwarding stats directly from the extension popup without opening the full dashboard. The extension communicates securely with your PicaMail account and does not track your browsing activity.
Yes. PicaMail offers mobile apps for both iOS and Android. The apps let you create and manage aliases, view forwarding statistics, enable or disable aliases, and compose send-from-alias emails on the go.
Push notifications alert you when a new alias is created via on-the-fly forwarding, so you always know when a new service has your alias. The PicaMail dashboard is also fully responsive and works well in mobile browsers if you prefer not to install an app.
That is a fair question - and exactly the kind of question a privacy-focused service should welcome. PicaMail is open source. You can audit the entire codebase on our GitHub repository to verify that we do what we say.
You can see exactly how emails are processed, confirm that no email content is stored, and verify our encryption implementation. The code that runs in production is the same code in the repository.
If you want even more control, you can self-host PicaMail on your own server and never trust a third party at all.
PicaMail is built to last. Our infrastructure costs are low by design, and Pro subscription revenue covers operating expenses with healthy margin. We are not dependent on venture capital or advertising revenue.
Because PicaMail is open source, even if the hosted service were to shut down, you could self-host it and keep your aliases working. We also provide data export so you always have a copy of your alias configuration.
If we ever need to shut down the hosted service, we will give at least 90 days notice and actively assist with migration to self-hosted instances or alternative providers.
Yes. PicaMail is fully open source and designed to be self-hostable. You need:
The self-hosted version includes all features with no artificial limitations. There is no "enterprise" upsell or locked features. Documentation for self-hosting is available in the GitHub repository, including a one-command Docker Compose setup.
You can reach PicaMail support through several channels:
Pro subscribers get priority support with faster response times. Free-tier support is handled on a best-effort basis, but we aim to respond to everyone within 48 hours.