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Guide: Manage Multiple Email Accounts from One Place

Guide: Manage Multiple Email Accounts from One Place
Guide: Manage Multiple Email Accounts from One Place

There are many reasons for having multiple email accounts, starting with the convenience of organizing your correspondence by work and private and all the way down to personal security. And while it's convenient and strongly encouraged by productivity experts on the one hand, it can be hard to manage one email account, not to mention a few.

It would make things easier if you could manage multiple email accounts from one place. But is that an option? This guide dives deep into what you can do to increase your email efficiency when dealing with multiple accounts.

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Why Do People Use Multiple Email Accounts?

Why Do People Use Multiple Email Accounts
Why Do People Use Multiple Email Accounts

1. To separate business from personal

Using the same email address for both personal and work-related conversations may be okay if you get a few messages a day and only one or two of them are important. But when your contact base grows and you start getting dozens of messages every day, using one email account will become impractical. When you have a separate email address for personal and another one for business matters, it's much easier to manage and prioritize.

2. To arrange better filtering for spam and subscriptions

When you want to receive an e-book or research paper, register on a website or a community, or receive interesting news, having a separate email address for what will eventually turn into spam is a nice way to protect your private inbox.

If you use one email account for conversations and registrations or subscriptions, it will soon be filled to the brim with all kinds of emails, from newsletters you wanted to spam you hate.

3. To protect their online identity

In line with the previous point, having multiple email accounts can help you protect your private inbox, such as using an alternate email for matters that aren't work-related, such as blogging, long-range informal communications, online surveys, or forums.

In this case, you may need a less-recognizable email address than the typical layout or a domain that effectively tracks back to you. For example, it can be the same as your blog name.


More like this:

  1. Best Windows Apps to Manage Multiple Email Accounts
  2. The Best Email Clients to Manage Multiple Accounts: Top Tools Reviewed
  3. Multiple Accounts: The Best Way to Combine Email Accounts
  4. Alternative to Mailspring: Manage Your Accounts With No-Fuss Setup

4. To organize various types of work

If you work with different projects or customers or even have two or more businesses, you may also need to separate one from another with multiple email accounts. For example, if you are an IT consultant and at the same time have an online shop, you would probably like to keep these two businesses and their respective email accounts discrete.

For that, you will obviously need to register different email accounts, or it will become difficult to manage all the emails and conversations and keep everything in order.

5. To separate marketing campaign launches from the rest

Another reason for having one more email account is sending advertising or follow-up messages, which may be very familiar to marketers and business owners. It's not only about newsletters. Contacting earlier-attended leads is also often connected with a number of email conversations.

Sending all these messages from a devoted email address keeps your main inbox from getting jumbled with reactions, bounces, and auto-replies.

6. To back up their main email

You may want to have a backup email address for password recovery purposes and to ensure you are aware of unauthorized access to your email. Many email suppliers will request that you provide a reinforcement email account backup when this occurs.

An indispensable backup email can also be used to forward the most important information to it, such as conversations with customers, important articles, etc.

7. To improve security

Having multiple email accounts may also help you keep your online presence secure. For example, you can utilize an auxiliary email to make arbitrary online purchases. If you don't, your information may end up on a mailing list or even the dark web.

Or you may want to increase the security of some delicate personal or business data you don't want to be disclosed. This goes for financial balances, distribution documents, and many other reasons for which a classified email address may be suitable. Just keep it secret so nobody knows it exists — and nobody wants to steal the password.

8. To focus on one thing at a time

It is easier to prioritize when you have multiple email accounts — if you're at work, only open the work email, and your attention won't wander to updates and subscriptions. And when it's your time off, close the work mail and focus on resting or personal matters.

So, let's get this straight. You can have multiple email accounts to contain your private matters, work, individual projects or marketing campaigns, foreseeable spam letters, blog, registrations, and a backup account. Sounds like too much for someone to efficiently handle.

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Possible Drawbacks of Having More than One Email Account

Overcoming the drawbacks of managing multiple email accounts
Overcoming the drawbacks of managing multiple email accounts

Realistically, only a small percentage of people have ten different accounts, but having more than one email account may boost your organizational skills and productivity significantly.

But also, it can create a mess if you're not careful, and you'll end up:

1. Spending more time sorting emails

You might have a type of job that obligates you to promptly respond to email, and you might be anxious to check it often. Or you get 50+ emails in a day and don't want them to pile up. So having another work account or a busy personal one might mean you're spending more time dealing with multiple emails, skipping from one account to another, and changing from one tab or app to another.

2. Having more distractions

Instead of clicking through multiple email accounts all the time, you could rely on notifications. Then again, they also create a distraction, popping up and dinging all the time. It's hard not to avert your attention when it flickers at the side of your screen.

3. Creating confusion

On a busy day, it's easy to confuse the tabs and send a message from your personal email address to a contact from work. If both email accounts have your full name in the profile, no biggie. The addressee will know who the letter is from. But when you need to come back to this letter, you'll waste time searching for it.

Bottom line — without proper organization and email management you might be getting into a mess of additional work and misunderstanding. However, the benefits of having multiple email accounts can easily outweigh the pitfalls if you have the right techniques and tools in your email efficiency arsenal.

How to Manage Multiple Email Accounts from One Place: Mistakes & Solutions

Email management mistakes
Email management mistakes

By now, you might be wondering, how do I get all my email accounts in one place without creating a bigger mess? Before we get to the tools and techniques that can help you manage email accounts better, let's focus on the simplest mistakes that lead to problems with multiple account management. Solving them is the first step to improved email efficiency.

Mistake #1: Keeping your notifications on

Whether on a computer or your phone, every time a notification pops up your mind will naturally register the movement, effectively distracting you from the task at hand. And it takes time to get back to work at the same rate as before you were distracted: about 64 seconds, as found in a 2005 study from Loughborough University.

Of course, it's an average number, but even if you take 15 seconds to recover and get back on track with the task you were doing, sum up all the email notifications you get in a day from different email accounts and other distractions, and you'll find how much time you are wasting.

How to avoid this becoming a problem: There are two ways. The first one is switching your email notification settings to high-priority only. This can easily be done through the Settings menu of your email client.

The second, more effective one is to turn off all notifications and check your inbox on a schedule. Once in an hour is enough, as research shows that only 8% of coworkers expect a reply in less time than that. Just correcting this mistake will make it much easier for you to manage email accounts.

Mistake #2: Keeping a tab with your email account open at all times

It's another cause for distraction that will urge you to click on a tab and check what's new, prompting you to click through all the other tabs you have open.

How to avoid this becoming a problem: Set a time for checking emails and open your email accounts only at that time or get an email client and have all your emails separate from online searches. If you want to keep it open, try disabling the Unread message icon that shows you how many new messages you have (once you see the little number, you instantly want to check).

Mistake #3: Using your email as a to-do list or a bookmark manager

The main purpose of email is communication. Sometimes it's task-related, but email accounts are not designed to track work progress. If you use it as a to-do list, you're bound to get a cluttered inbox and miss deadlines.

How to avoid this becoming a problem: As soon as you get a task via email, write it down in a notebook and stash the email in a relevant folder, archive it, or snooze it. Better yet, use the Evernote clipper or an appropriate task manager, such as Todoist or Asana, that allows you to forward the email as a task.

Mistake #4: Wrong organization of mailboxes

Organization can go haywire if you don't have a purpose for each of your multiple email accounts. If you start subscribing to newsletters with your work email (even if they are work-related), you're going to muddle your inbox with low-priority emails that don't require your attention during the working hours.

How to avoid this becoming a problem: Separate your email addresses from one another by their goals and priorities.

Mistake #5: Subscribing to too many listings and keeping them

There's no harm in subscribing to a blog or a newsletter you find interesting, but if you don't read them, these messages become outdated and turn into junk. You know those digest newsletters you sometimes open up, see a few good titles linked, and think you'll read an article or two from later? That time never comes, and the links expire, so what you're left with is just a bunch of headlines that should go straight to the bin.

With some subscriptions, you'll get actual messages or the entirety of the new posts within a newsletter. Still, you should keep them only if you read them.

How to avoid this becoming a problem: Use a separate email address or have a filter that sends all subscriptions into a newsletter folder. Set a time to read them. And unsubscribe from the ones you don't read. Getting rid of too many listings will undoubtedly make it easier to manage email accounts.

Mistake #6: Answering all the messages right away without any prioritization

You don't need to rush checking for emails, and you also don't need to rush replying to emails as soon as they appear in your inbox. Most people don't expect you to answer in less than an hour; it's not chat or a phone call.

If you reply to emails without an order of importance, you risk wasting time and losing high-priority messages that do require your prompt reaction.

How to avoid this becoming a problem: An easy way to avoid situations like this one is to first read who the letter is from and the subject line. This helps you decide on the priority and go straight to the most urgent one or, well, the one with "Urgent" in the subject line. A more complex but useful way is using the filters, folders, and labels your email client has to offer.

Mistake #7: Checking your email while on vacation or over the weekend

The only valid reason to do that is if you are expecting an email that will require your immediate reaction. It's safe to say there wouldn't be many instances like that. And if the matter is indeed urgent, you will get a phone call.

How to avoid this becoming an issue: You can set an auto-reply for when you're on vacation, for all incoming emails or just from your contacts list, telling people when you're coming back and will be available to reply.

Manage Multiple Email Accounts from One Place Mistakes Infographic
Manage Multiple Email Accounts from One Place Mistakes Infographic

What Options Are There to Make Managing Email Accounts More Effective?

There are a few options for managing email accounts, though not all of them can guarantee you a good result.

1. Open each account in a web browser

That's probably how you manage multiple accounts in Gmail. If your email provider supports webmail, instead of merging email accounts into one, you can open each account in a new tab or window and switch between them using keyboard shortcuts. It's handy if you need to keep all email accounts open at the same time (for example, if you work on two projects and have a unique address for each).

Any cons?

  • You might confuse which tab you are on and send an email from the wrong account.
  • You might get distracted by the number of tabs open and waste time looking for the right one.

2. Set up email forwarding to a master account

You can choose one account that will be the primary and set up all emails to be forwarded here from different accounts (they don't have to be from the same provider). This also means you can use the primary account to send emails from different addresses (you can choose which email to send from when composing a new email).

Any cons?

  • The primary account might start overflowing with emails.
  • Yet again, you're getting yourself into the trouble of having to watch carefully that you're sending from the right address.

3. Use a desktop email client that supports multiple accounts

The best way to manage multiple email accounts is by using an email client. An email client is an app that can be installed on your computer, and it is meant to improve email management with additional features (some apps have more features than webmail can offer).

Just make sure you can add more than one account to the email provider you choose, and you'll be able to:

  • set up notifications, filters, and labels/folders for all email accounts in one place
  • quickly switch between accounts as needed
  • use any other perks a specific app provides

Any cons? A desktop email client implies that you can access it only from the computer it's installed on, so if you need to open your mailbox from a different computer temporarily, you'll have to go back to webmail.

6 Ways to Effectively Manage Multiple Email Accounts from One Place: Intermediate Sum Up

If you find managing multiple email accounts a tedious task, we have a solution for you. Applying just one of the following tips will make your life much easier.

  1. Use an email client such as Mailbird to combine several email accounts into one.
  2. Check your emails frequently.
  3. If you don't have an email client, you can use multiple browsers to check different email accounts.
  4. Forward all your emails to one master account.
  5. Create multiple folders and filters to sort your multiple email accounts.

At this point, you might be wondering, "How do I get all my email accounts in one place and start managing them effectively?" A good way to do that is by using an email client that allows you to connect multiple email accounts. Here are a few popular options. Let's see which one is the best.

Mailbird

Mailbird email client interface
Mailbird email client interface

Mailbird is an email client designed to conveniently manage one or more email accounts. It has a very convenient user interface and many features to help boost your email efficiency.

Benefits of Mailbird for multiple-account email management

  • Unified Inbox Plus. You can consolidate email accounts and view all mail from different accounts in one inbox or simply switch between the account in the same interface. This helps you see the bigger picture and makes organizing all your emails easier.
  • Powerful productivity app integrations. Mailbird connects to many apps designed to boost personal and email productivity and create a virtual workspace with many tools, including Asana, Dropbox, Todoist, Evernote, and messengers.
  • A native calendar. It has its own calendar app that can instantly connect to all your email accounts, so you see the entirety of your daily schedule and future events.
  • Great time-saving features. It has some fantastic features that make dealing with emails more convenient, such as:
    • A speed reader that screens the contents of an email one phrase at a time, which encourages more focused reading.
    • In-line reply that allows you to reply to parts of the email so you don't miss an important point; this is more convenient for you and the addressee than using quoted text.
    • Attachment preview that allows you to open an attachment without having to open an email and scroll to the bottom of it; this does save quite a bit of time.

Any cons? Some find the lack of a free version a disadvantage, but this is what lets the app be so convenient and regularly updated with new useful features. Moreover, there is a free trial period to try the app out, and the price is very affordable.

Conclusion. Mailbird is a great choice if you have more than one email account, as it was created specifically for effective multiple account management and improving productivity at work.

Microsoft Office Outlook

Microsoft Office Outlook new interface
Microsoft Office Outlook new interface

Outlook is a veteran among email clients, which is expected from a tool that comes with the Windows OS basic package. It is most commonly used for managing email accounts but also includes a calendar and task manager.

Benefits for multiple email management

  • Has a good organization system. You can create folders and filters to sort out your emails.
  • Connects to other Microsoft products. Since it's a Microsoft product, you can use their Office suite and Skype in the app.
  • Connects to social media. You integrate Twitter and LinkedIn and view their feeds inside the app.

Any cons? Even with the new design, Outlook is rather cluttered, and at times it's inconvenient to find the right feature since there are so many buttons. And also:

  • It doesn't have a unified inbox. People have asked for the feature, but all in vain. You need to go through so many steps to view all of your mail that it defeats its time-saving purpose.
  • Makes it difficult to manage contacts. You can't fit a contact into two categories without duplicating it, but you can't filter by categories either.
  • Makes integrating non-Microsoft apps a challenge. Even though it has many integrations and add-ons, a lot of users find it problematic to integrate and use apps that aren't part of the MS suite.

Conclusion. You can manage multiple email accounts using Outlook, but it won't be so easy and convenient. You can't view all emails from different email accounts at once, and the interface is not very intuitive; rather, it's cluttered with a lot of features and buttons.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird
Thunderbird

Thunderbird is an email client by Mozilla that also supports multiple accounts. It's a functional app with a more minimalistic design than Outlook.

Benefits for multiple-account management

  • Runs smoothly. It's been around for a long time and is well tested, so glitches are rare.
  • Spam filter. It has a powerful algorithm to filter out junk mail.
  • A lot of extensions. You can integrate other features into Thunderbird, such as an RSS feed.

Any cons? The UI seriously lacks the convenience and cleanliness of modern design. And also:

  • The small font of the message box means you can make the window larger but not the font size, so it can be inconvenient to read.
  • It's open-source, which should have been an advantage, except it opens the app to many community-made features that don't bring much value or any at all.
  • It's only partially supported by Mozilla, which puts Thunderbird's operation and development of new features on shaky ground.

Conclusion. Thunderbird is not the most convenient email client to use as is. So it may not be the best option for managing multiple email accounts, even though it does offer that option.

How to Make My Mail Consolidated and Manage It with Mailbird?

Combining email accounts in Mailbird is easy, and adding more email accounts isn't any more complicated. You just need to add all your email addresses in the Accounts tab of the Settings menu:

Adding accounts to Mailbird
Adding accounts to Mailbird

Now that all your accounts are in Mailbird, you can use the Unified Inbox feature to conveniently manage multiple email accounts from one place. Each account has a color indicator, so it's easy to identify an email's destination.

Mailbird's Unified Inbox
Mailbird's Unified Inbox

Or switch between accounts by choosing one on the sidebar.

Mailbird features that help manage multiple email accounts:

  • Navigation sidebar. The left-hand sidebar is a feature of its own, as it offers you a simple way of navigating all your accounts, whether you want to switch between them or view the Unified Inbox.
  • Folder organization. Folders help you archive emails under an appropriate name, theme, or topic and find them more easily later. You can add, edit, or remove folders as you need, as well as create sub-folders within an existing one.
  • Advanced search. It can be easy to forget which account to search for the information you need. However, when you're using the Unified Inbox, the search feature can pull information from all your accounts, thus simplifying the search and saving you from a headache.
  • Native calendar. You can view all your events in one place, disregarding what email account it comes to, whether in the built-in feature or in your sidebar. You can also create sub-calendars to make sure you don't mix personal and work emails.
  • Automatic signatures. Having a custom signature for each of your accounts is a good way to save time on typing them in each message you send. It's also an unobvious tool that allows for making sure you're sending an email from the right address.

Mailbird app integrations that can help with multiple email management

Mailbird app integrations that can help with multiple email management
Mailbird app integrations that can help with multiple email management

You can increase your messaging quality and productivity by going to Add-ons and connecting:

  • Grammarly to improve the quality of your writing
  • Messengers (Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter) to stop using your email as chat
  • Dropbox to share and collaborate on files
  • G-suite (Google Drive apps, Calendar, Hangouts) to keep your documents and schedules in a cloud
  • Todoist to manage your tasks
  • Evernote to keep your thoughts in one place and always handy instead of covering a table with sticky notes

Mailbird for Business has additional integrations, such as:

  • Asana and Trello — for managing projects and keeping track of your workflow and deadlines
  • Slack — for project-specific communication with your team
  • FollowUp.cc — for keeping track of emails that require follow-ups to set reminders or automatic replies

See this article for a full list of integrations.

How Mailbird Can Help You Manage Multiple Email Accounts in One Place

Managing one or more email accounts can be easy if you have the right techniques and appropriate tools. We've covered most of the techniques on how to manage multiple email accounts in the previous section, so here let's sum up the most useful features worth trying out:

1. Managing all your email accounts with ease

You don't need to open numerous tabs or windows in your browser or set up forwarding to manage all your personal and business email. In Mailbird, you can access all your email accounts in one place, so you can easily switch from one account to another or create a unified inbox with color-coded accounts so you don't confuse which account you're using at the moment.

2. Keeping all your emails and integrations accessible

It's not only your email accounts that are in one place but also your calendar (which can open up in the sidebar), messengers, and other integrations. You don't need to open new tabs or launch apps to check a date or update a task.

3. Keeping all your mailboxes neatly organized

You can achieve Inbox Zero with folders and filters, creating a structure that works for you. This helps prioritize what emails to work on first and makes it easier to find the information you need.

4. Finding messages and files easily

The email and attachment searches will help you find the necessary data from any account without switching between them. The advanced search feature has different filters that help you narrow down the search, such as by sender address or having attachments. What's unique about Mailbird is that you can actually search attachments only, by a word or phrase a file name contains or by its size.

5. Increasing your productivity

Just think of how many apps on your desktop and tabs in your browser you have open already — all the clicking and switching between them can cause you to lose focus. Mailbird, on the other hand, creates a true workspace within the app so you can limit your distractions and helps you be more mindful while at work.

6. Saving time

Mailbird has a clean user interface where everything is easily accessible and intuitive. Canned responses, signatures, filters, auto-follow ups, and other features help save more of your valuable time.

7. And improving your life/work balance

You can set up a true virtual workspace with all the integrations and focus on working in one app with limited distractions. But when it's time to switch off, you literally switch off and enjoy your personal space.

Quick Time-Saving Tips for Managing Multiple Accounts

Tips for managing multiple email accounts
Tips for managing multiple email accounts

Here are a few tips that can be used as a checklist to sort through email (and e-junk) and manage multiple email accounts effectively:

  1. Set a time to check on your emails, and don't do them all at once. It's not a chat; most people won't expect a reply from you as soon as their email hits your inbox. Once an hour is enough to see what's new and assign a folder/priority.
  2. Process emails only one to two times a day. There's no need to reply to all emails every time you check, unless it's urgent or your job only requires replying to emails. Set aside half an hour in your workday when you can focus solely on emails.
  3. Turn off notifications. They'll just keep distracting you from the current tasks, so go to notification settings in your email client and turn them off.
  4. Unsubscribe from as many newsletters as possible. Start with those that are constantly left unread or unopened. A good trick to find all these subscriptions is to type in the word "Unsubscribe" in the search bar.
  5. Turn on autoresponder while you're on vacation. You can set up an automatic templated response that will be sent in reply to any incoming email or just the ones from your contact list. Let people know you're not to be disturbed and specify a date when you'll be able to reply personally.
  6. Sort and filter emails into folders. A good structure to your emails will help you navigate your inbox more easily, and filters will help automate the process of sorting them.
  7. Program an automatic email signature. Instead of typing the same ending in all messages, you can create a signature that will be automatically added to the assigned account emails to save you some time.
  8. Create templates to copy and paste similar responses. As with the signature, creating templates of repeated responses will help you save time. For example, it can be canned responses of follow-up messages you always send.
  9. Use keyboard shortcuts. We use them to give commands to our computers, but not many people know you can use shortcuts to do things like opening the new email window or sending one to archive.
  10. Decide with each email. Don't let emails overtake your inbox. When it's time to do emails, either read them or use the Delete, Archive, and Snooze buttons.
  11. Aim for Inbox Zero, but don't stress. The magic of tidying up is the trendiest topic right now, and even that trend's intention is to clear up your mind. If achieving Inbox Zero is making you anxious, pushing it won't do any good for you or your productivity.

Wrap Up

Having two or more email accounts to divide email addresses by purpose is an awesome way to protect your online identity, separate business from personal, better organize different types of work, and more. If you've heard or experienced the opposite, this guide will walk you through the different steps and recommendations to effectively manage multiple email accounts. But here are a few excerpts to start you off:

Start by eliminating distractions, such as keeping all notifications on or having your email open at all times in a browser. That's not efficient, even if you have only one account.

Analyze your emails to make sure you're using them for the right purposes. Usually one is for business correspondence and another's for personal matters, but it may be wise to also have separate accounts for different work projects or newsletter subscriptions.

And try out Mailbird! It's not just a popular email client; it is also the best one yet for managing multiple email accounts from one place. It has many features and integrations to help limit distractions, organize all your correspondence, and overall increase your productivity.

Try Mailbird, the best Windows app to manage multiple email accounts

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FAQ

How do I manage multiple email accounts?

The best way to manage several email accounts is by using an email client such as Mailbird. Such clients will help you combine multiple email accounts into one master account. You will be able to quickly switch between accounts and also set up notifications, filters, and labels/folders for all accounts in one place.

How can I get all my email accounts in one place?

To get all your email accounts in one place you need to create one unified inbox that will collect all your emails. For example, you can create one master email account and set up all your other accounts to automatically forward all emails to that one. But the simplest solution would be using an email client such as Mailbird that will do all the work for you.

Is it better to have multiple email accounts?

Yes, it is. Having multiple email addresses can actually speed up communication instead of slowing it down. However, managing multiple email accounts is not an easy task. The most convenient way to do this is with the help of an email management software such as Mailbird.

Why should I have multiple email accounts?

Having multiple email accounts can help you save time and remove any frustration related to email communication. In addition, having multiple email accounts will help you:- Separate business emails from personal ones- Divide multiple departments, projects, and teams accordingly- Manage public use of your personal information- Easily filter registrations, subscriptions, and spam emails- Manage marketing campaigns effectively- Secure your online identity

What is the most professional email?

There are many different email apps available. The most convenient and professional email client currently available (according to customer reviews) is Mailbird. Not only will Mailbird help you manage all your emails from one place, but it will impress you with its other features. For example, you can use Mailbird to unsend your emails, postpone emails from others, and even integrate your other apps into it.