How to Migrate Email Aliases from SimpleLogin to Emcognito

Because shared provider domains cannot be transferred between services, learning how to migrate email aliases from simplelogin requires a sequential cutover: export your alias directory from SimpleLogin, generate replacement forwarding addresses on Emcognito, update each third-party account individually, and dual-run both services during the transition to prevent missed emails. This step-by-step simplelogin migration guide covers the cutover mechanics, credential updates, reply workflows, and automated alias creation via REST API.

Email forwarding addresses act as intermediary relays between public services and your private inbox. When an alias lives on a shared domain like @simplelogin.com, that namespace remains permanently anchored to the legacy provider's mail exchangers. Because you cannot transfer ownership of a provider-owned domain, migration is an operational process rather than a DNS zone transfer. This guide outlines how to execute that process cleanly across your active accounts.

The Realities of Alias Migration: What Transfers and What Does Not

Before modifying any credentials, you must understand the technical boundary between domain routing and mailbox identity. Aliases generated on SimpleLogin's shared domains (such as @simplelogin.com, @simplelogin.co, or @aleeas.com) cannot be ported to another provider. If you cancel your legacy account or turn off forwarding on those addresses before updating your third-party logins, inbound mail sent to those aliases bounces immediately.

If you routed mail through personal domains attached to your legacy account, migration historically involved changing DNS records. However, Emcognito handles routing differently: Emcognito aliases use the shared emcognito.com domain. Custom subdomain support is planned, but custom domains are not available today. Consequently, migrating any alias to Emcognito—whether originating from a shared domain or a personal domain—follows a sequential, site-by-site replacement workflow.

A primary driver for migration is how providers meter usage. Based on the public SimpleLogin pricing page as of 2026, the free tier limits accounts to 10 aliases total, requiring an upgrade to create more. Emcognito structures its tiers around message throughput rather than alias quantity: what is metered is forwarded email, not aliases. Emcognito provides unlimited aliases on every tier, including its Free plan. Source: SimpleLogin pricing .

As detailed on the Emcognito pricing page, the Free tier includes unlimited aliases, 100 forwarded messages per month, and free replies from any alias, with no credit card required at signup. When your forwarding volume increases, Emcognito Plus costs $20 per year (or $2 per month) for 2,500 forwards per month, removes the sponsor card, adds the developer API at 50 aliases per day, and allows you to compose new mail from any alias. Emcognito Pro costs $36 per year (or $4 per month) for 15,000 forwards per month, a higher daily compose limit, and 200 API creations per day. Yearly Pro provides three months free and represents the best annual value. Sizing your migration plan around message throughput rather than alias counts ensures you can provision as many dedicated forwarding addresses as your accounts require.

Exporting Your Data: How to Migrate Email Aliases from SimpleLogin

The first practical step in your cutover is exporting aliases from simplelogin to establish a comprehensive directory of every service tied to your account. This export acts as your punch list during migration, ensuring no third-party accounts are abandoned or forgotten.

To extract your data from SimpleLogin:

1. Log in to your SimpleLogin web dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings and locate the Data Export section.
3. Request an export of your alias directory. The platform generates a downloadable CSV file containing your alias records.
4. Save this file locally in a secure workspace.

• Alias Address: The specific forwarding address (for example, my-store.k9x1@simplelogin.com).
• Destination Mailbox: The real inbox where messages are routed.
• Notes and Labels: Any website tags, descriptions, or internal categories you assigned when creating the alias.
• Status: Whether the alias is active, blocked, or suspended.
• Creation Date: A timestamp indicating how long the alias has been active.

Open this CSV in a spreadsheet application and sanitize your records. Filter out disabled or abandoned aliases associated with defunct services. Next, sort the remaining active aliases into three operational risk tiers:

• High-priority accounts typically include banking, credit cards, tax utilities, primary email providers, government services, and domain registrars.
• Medium-priority accounts generally encompass e-commerce stores with stored payment methods, cloud SaaS platforms, active subscription services, and developer portals.
• Low-priority accounts generally cover newsletters, community forums, marketing subscriptions, and infrequent informational logins.

Once your cutover list is structured, prepare your destination account. Emcognito uses passwordless signup via an emailed magic link. There is no password to manage, no desktop client to configure, and no separate ecosystem application required. Enter your destination email address and click the one-time sign-in link in your email to access your account on the Free tier.

How to Migrate Email Aliases from SimpleLogin Without Dropping Inbound Mail

The most common failure mode during an alias transition is treating cutover as an instantaneous event. Avoid deleting an alias or canceling your legacy subscription on day one. Safe migration relies on dual-running: operating both providers concurrently so inbound messages route without interruption regardless of which address a sender uses.

Follow this five-step execution plan to work through your prioritized spreadsheet:

1. Keep Your Source Provider Operational: Ensure your existing SimpleLogin account remains active in either a paid or free state. Do not disable forwarding on legacy addresses while beginning the transition.
2. Mint a Replacement Alias on Emcognito: For each line item in your spreadsheet, generate a new forwarding address. You can do this directly in the Emcognito web dashboard or by using the Chrome browser extension, which allows you to generate and insert an alias inline on any account settings form. Every Emcognito alias is an independent forwarding record using the shared emcognito.com namespace.
3. Test Inbound Delivery on Non-Critical Accounts: Before updating high-risk services, test forwarding with a low-stakes service. Update the address on an informational newsletter or secondary forum account. Trigger an automated email—such as a profile update confirmation—and verify that the message forwards cleanly through Emcognito to your primary mailbox.
4. Swap Credentials Systematically: Log in to each target website, navigate to account security or profile settings, and update your registered email address from the legacy alias to your new Emcognito alias. Many services trigger a verification link or a one-time passcode (OTP) to the new address. Because Emcognito routes mail immediately, the verification message arrives in your inbox without delay. Confirm the change on the service's website.
5. Record and Verify the Cutover: Mark the corresponding row in your spreadsheet as migrated, record the new Emcognito alias, and verify that the third-party service reflects the update.

According to analysis published by the FTC on website data collection practices, online platforms routinely share, cross-reference, and monetize contact data across advertising networks. Running an isolated alias per site makes it immediately obvious if a specific provider sells or leaks your data. If spam arrives at an address designated exclusively for an online retailer, you know that retailer leaked or sold the address.

On Emcognito, isolating and stopping a leak does not require complex routing rules. Any alias can be suspended or deleted individually with one click from the dashboard. Suspending the address cuts off the sender immediately, keeping your real inbox shielded without disrupting communications from any other service.

Technical Trade-Offs: Ecosystem Bundles Versus Standalone Forwarders

Migrating between alias tools often reflects a shift in infrastructure philosophy. SimpleLogin operates under the Proton umbrella, pairing aliasing with Proton Mail, Proton Pass, and Proton VPN. For users seeking an integrated suite, bundling offers administrative convenience. However, tying your identity layer to a single vendor creates friction if you want to use diverse mail providers or avoid proprietary app dependencies.

Emcognito operates strictly as an unbundled, standalone email forwarding utility. It routes incoming mail to whatever destination mailbox you choose—whether that is Fastmail, Gmail, Apple iCloud, or an independent mail server. There is no software client to install and no integrated password vault.

When evaluating these options, technical buyers inspect the exact mail transport mechanics. Emcognito is an email alias service: it creates durable, reply-capable forwarding addresses that deliver to your real inbox without revealing it. It is not a disposable, burner, or temporary inbox. Mail transits Postfix and relays via SES. Emcognito forwards mail over TLS-encrypted transport and does not read message contents or retain them after delivery, apart from a brief hold on mail that arrives over your monthly forward cap, but it is not end-to-end encrypted. For content confidentiality, pair it with an encrypted mailbox such as Proton Mail or Tuta.

Furthermore, Emcognito is not a zero-knowledge service. It does not read or analyse message contents, or retain them after delivery, apart from a brief hold on mail that arrives over your monthly forward cap, but it necessarily handles mail in readable form in order to deliver it. Regarding operational logs, Emcognito collects no personal information beyond a destination address and does not retain message bodies after delivery, apart from a brief hold on mail that arrives over your monthly forward cap, but it keeps the delivery and operational logs any mail service needs. That is data minimisation, not a no-log policy.

The following table outlines the operational differences between SimpleLogin, Emcognito, and standard forwarders:

Pricing transparency matters during a cutover. On Emcognito, paid tiers begin with a 7-day free trial. Entering a credit card starts the trial, and nothing is charged until the 7 days elapse. Plus provides 2,500 forwards per month for $20 per year (or $2 per month), while Pro provides 15,000 forwards per month for $36 per year (or $4 per month). Review the Emcognito pricing page to choose the forward throughput that fits your account volume.

Handling Inbound Replies and Outbound Mail During Migration

During migration, communication is rarely one-way. When you change an email address on a banking portal, insurance dashboard, or software vendor account, customer support often reaches out to confirm account ownership or request updated authorization forms. If your forwarding service cannot handle two-way communication, your workflow breaks.

Understanding how Emcognito processes replies is critical during cutover. Replying to a forwarded message is included on every Emcognito plan, Free as well, and it happens in your delivery log: open the delivered message and choose Reply securely, and Emcognito sends it with the alias as the sender. Replying from your own mail app is paused for security and is refused rather than delivered. Composing a brand-new message from an alias is the Plus and Pro feature.

For technical and security reasons, the live Reply-To token is a plaintext substitution and the correspondent's address is readable in the header by anyone who sees it. It is not an encrypted, hashed, or opaque token. Mail sent through the secure reply interface replaces your real address with the specific alias address before relaying out, hiding your real address from the sender.

A frequent problem during migration arises when a third-party service locks your profile during an email update and asks you to initiate an email to their support desk. With SimpleLogin, starting a new thread requires generating an explicit reverse alias via their web UI or browser extension. On Emcognito Free, you cannot compose new mail from an alias—that is the only capability Free lacks at any usage level. Replying to forwarded mail is included at no additional charge on every Emcognito tier via your delivery log.

If you need to initiate communications with third-party support desks using your alias identity, upgrading to Plus or Pro unlocks composing new mail from any alias. In the Emcognito dashboard, you enter the destination recipient address, choose which alias to send from, type your subject and body, and transmit. The email leaves Emcognito's mail infrastructure showing your alias as the From header, allowing you to resolve account verification tickets without exposing your private inbox.

According to long-standing Pew Research Center studies on digital communication workflows, email remains the foundational backbone for organizational operations and account recovery across modern web services. Maintaining bi-directional communication guarantees that you can fulfill account verification requests while moving credentials across services.

Automating Alias Provisioning via the Developer REST API

If you manage dozens of client accounts, run automated testing pipelines, or maintain infrastructure monitoring that provisions distinct alert sinks, migrating manually through a dashboard is inefficient. Both SimpleLogin and Emcognito offer developer APIs, but their endpoints, models, and rate-limit contracts differ.

Emcognito provides a clean REST API on paid plans (Plus and Pro) with a base URL of https://api.emcognito.com/v1. There is no /api/v1 path. Authentication uses a bearer token passed in the HTTP Authorization header: Authorization: Bearer <key>. API keys are strictly prefixed with emk_ followed by 43 URL-safe characters. Emcognito does not use separate live/test keys or alternative prefixes.

When migrating automated pipelines, review the exact API contract detailed on the Emcognito developer documentation:

• Listing Aliases: Call GET /v1/aliases. This endpoint supports pagination via next_cursor and last_key query parameters.
• Creating Aliases: Call POST /v1/aliases.
• Response Status: POST /v1/aliases returns HTTP 200 with the new alias under "alias". A refusal from the per-key burst limit carries a Retry-After header giving the whole seconds to wait; the alias-creation cap returns its refusal without one, and that cap clears at midnight UTC. Emcognito sends no X-RateLimit-* headers on either. The current burst and cap figures are on the developer reference.
• Response Structure: As documented in the developer reference, the response returns an alias JSON object containing id, address, status, created_at (represented as an integer epoch timestamp), forward_count, label, note, source, category, single_use, and expires_at. The schema specifies that unset string fields return as empty strings rather than null.
• Management Scoping: v1 of the Emcognito API creates and lists aliases (GET and POST /v1/aliases). Suspending, resuming and deleting an alias are one-click dashboard actions today; there is no PATCH or DELETE endpoint yet.

Here is an executable Python example illustrating how to programmatically recreate an exported list of aliases in Emcognito using urllib.request from the standard library:

import json
import urllib.request
import urllib.error

API_URL = "https://api.emcognito.com/v1/aliases"
API_KEY = "emk_1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEF1"
payload = {
    "label": "GitHub Notifications",
    "note": "Migrated from SimpleLogin alias sl_gh_84f",
    "category": "Development",
    "source": "migration_script"
}
req = urllib.request.Request(
    API_URL,
    data=json.dumps(payload).encode("utf-8"),
    headers={
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    },
    method="POST"
)
try:
    with urllib.request.urlopen(req) as response:
        if response.status == 200:
            data = json.loads(response.read().decode("utf-8"))
            alias_data = data["alias"]
            print(f"Created alias: {alias_data['address']} (ID: {alias_data['id']})")
except urllib.error.HTTPError as e:
    error_body = e.read().decode("utf-8")
    print(f"HTTP {e.code}: {error_body}")

When running batch migration scripts, observe the limits documented in the developer reference. POST /v1/aliases returns HTTP 200 with the new alias under "alias". A refusal from the per-key burst limit carries a Retry-After header giving the whole seconds to wait; the alias-creation cap returns its refusal without one, and that cap clears at midnight UTC. Emcognito sends no X-RateLimit-* headers on either. The current burst and cap figures are on the developer reference. Daily alias creation is capped at 50 per day on Plus and 200 per day on Pro.

Post-Migration Audit: Decommissioning Old Aliases Safely

After migrating your high-, medium-, and low-priority credentials to Emcognito, enter a passive observation phase. Do not immediately delete your legacy SimpleLogin account. Users frequently overlook secondary services, annual tax reporting forms, or utility logins that message accounts only once or twice a year.

Plan an observation window to run both systems concurrently and verify forwarding stability before completing your migration.

1. Check Legacy Forwarding Logs Weekly: Log in to SimpleLogin every seven days to review the forwarding log. Identify any automated statements, password notices, or account updates still arriving at legacy addresses.
2. Migrate Straggler Accounts: Whenever an inbound message reaches an old alias, navigate to that sender's website and update the registered profile to a created Emcognito alias. Update your spreadsheet log accordingly.
3. Verify Message Security: As you transition lingering accounts, stay alert to unauthorized access attempts. Consumer resources like the FTC guidance on recognizing phishing scams recommend auditing unexpected profile update emails to ensure malicious senders are not exploiting old forwarding routes.
4. Cleanly Suspend Leaked Aliases: If you discover that a legacy alias received substantial spam volume, do not port it. Instead, let it terminate on SimpleLogin. If a created address on Emcognito begins receiving unsolicited marketing mail down the road, navigate to the Emcognito dashboard and suspend or delete the alias with one click. This cuts off inbound routing immediately while pinpointing which vendor exposed your address.
5. Close the Source Account: Once 60 consecutive days pass with zero inbound mail routing through your legacy SimpleLogin account, you can downgrade the account or close it entirely.

Structuring your transition this way prevents lost account recovery requests and eliminates service interruptions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I transfer my existing @simplelogin.com alias addresses directly to Emcognito?

No. Aliases on shared provider domains such as @simplelogin.com or @aleeas.com are permanently owned by SimpleLogin's parent infrastructure. Because you do not own the underlying domain, you cannot transfer or point those addresses to another email forwarding provider. You must generate replacement aliases using Emcognito and update your registered email address directly on each third-party website.

Will I lose incoming emails while migrating my accounts from SimpleLogin to Emcognito?

You will not drop emails if you use a dual-running cutover workflow. Keep your SimpleLogin account operational while updating your logins site by site. As each site is updated to your new Emcognito alias, inbound messages immediately flow through Emcognito's relays. Keeping SimpleLogin active for 30 to 60 days captures late-arriving emails and straggler accounts before you shut off the legacy service.

Can I reply to forwarded emails using Emcognito during the migration process?

Replying to a forwarded message is included on every Emcognito plan, Free as well, and it happens in your delivery log: open the delivered message and choose Reply securely, and Emcognito sends it with the alias as the sender. Replying from your own mail app is paused for security and is refused rather than delivered. Composing a brand-new message from an alias is the Plus and Pro feature.

How does Emcognito meter usage compared to SimpleLogin's alias count limits?

As documented on the public SimpleLogin pricing page, free accounts are limited to 10 aliases total, requiring a paid upgrade to generate more. Emcognito provides unlimited aliases on every tier, including its Free plan. As listed on the Emcognito pricing page , the Free tier includes 100 forwarded messages per month. For higher delivery volume, Emcognito Plus ($20 per year or $2 per month) includes 2,500 forwards per month, and Emcognito Pro ($36 per year or $4 per month) includes 15,000 forwards per month.