Realistically, most people can handle 2 to 4 free email accounts without losing their sanity. That is the balance where you have enough separation for different spheres of your life and not enough to get them all mixed up in inbox pandemonium.
Gmail Says Four and Reality Says Less
Gmail allows you to create 4 accounts with a single phone number which sounds generous at first. It is not as easy as it seems.
Once, I attempted to manage five accounts. That was a colossal blunder. With more than four, you will need a different phone number for every additional account. Google’s anti-abuse systems are really strict towards people attempting to mass account creation.
ProtonMail is much tougher. They have a strict one free account per person policy. Some people attempt to bypass it by creating more accounts, but it risks suspension.
Other providers like Outlook and Yahoo also have similar phone number verification policies. It is possible to game the system to get 2-4 accounts per provider.
Why I Stopped at 4
Active email accounts goes up 4-5, it becomes actively bewildering to manage. It worked the first week, and then it all came crashing down.
You start missing key emails, losing track of what account to use for which service, and suffering from general email exhaustion. Cybersecurity specialists suggest separate accounts for different purposes, but there's a limit to how much information your brain can manage.
Most people usually divide their email into several categories: personal, work, shopping and subscriptions, and a sensitive one for banking details. Each account has a specific email purpose to streamline prioritization.
Going beyond this leads to negative productivity impacts. The time spent coordinating all the extra accounts offsets the benefits of streamlined organization.
Too Many Accounts? It Gets Messy Fast
Having too many email accounts opens gaps in security. Each new account increases your attack surface. Creating a new account and logging in seems easy, but remembering all the passwords can be a task in itself.
Making sure each separate account has a strong and unique password becomes increasingly complicated. Unused accounts are more susceptible to hacking or being deleted due to dormancy.
There is a tangible lack of productivity. Email multitasking inevitably leads to missed emails, responded to slower, and overall slower to troubleshoot problems. There are too many accounts to check, so dread sets in.
Unused emails decrease the chance the remaining accounts will get flagged. Every email stowed away brings down the likelihood on the whole account getting flagged randomly.
What Truly Email Management Solutions Without Make You More Productive
A simple way to optimize your email management is by using desktop clients such as Mailbird or Thunderbird to consolidate other accounts. These clients allow you to manage several email accounts from one interface and thus, eliminate constant signing in and out.
As I suspected, I found it manageable to check each account separately. But in reality, I was sorely mistaken.
Set up automatic filters and folders to sort emails by sender, topic, or importance. This helps in prioritizing main inboxes and centralizing the core functions of other inboxes/breaking up digital clutter as well as retrieving important emails.
Assume that each account has a designated role and assign them. You risk overlapping purposes and having multiple accounts checked for identical message types which is highly inefficient.
Instead of chronically checking monotonous tasks like emails, set time intervals to check emails. This boosts productivity by reducing chronic distractions and redundant tasks.
Using search terms like unsubscribe helps find and delete obsolete newsletters rapidly. Regularly removing nouns to delete unwanted subscriptions assists in email maintenance.
In order to reduce clutter in your main inbox, archive emails that contain information you want to refer to in the future. Ongoing habits to reinforce deleting non relevant emails is also essential.
Mastering maintaining focus such as refraining from checking email updates enables one to tend to other tasks in peace. Most email users underestimate inbox management and tend to focus on distractions such as constantly checking alerts.
Email Management Limits Target Customers
Maintaining minimal organizational systems and features within accounts mastered by having four free accounts maximally ensures stability. Airlines and stores are incentivized to have their dedicated inboxes, further honing to underused tools users such as stores and other promotional services enhance the reward for mastering email targeting customers below the average.
Have one for personal activities, one for professional undertakings, another for shopping and subscriptions, and possibly one for sensitive financial communications. Going beyond this creates more issues than it solves, including in regard to security, lost messages, and reduced productivity.
All these changes don’t confuse you and trust me on this one: an orderly account maintains regular cleanup and dedicated smart strategies that are streamlined are critical to any and all accounts you decide to have.