On 2019-11-22, Ralph Seichter via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote: > * Robert via dovecot: > >> We use a simple system for routing emails to different email users by >> postfixing the addresses with the actual user: xxxJohn@domain; >> yyyJohn@domain etc all will be delivered to user John. >> (This way John can invent a new email address on-the-fly and that will >> be delivered to his email box.)
But now you can't have a username like "BigJohn@domain". To avoid this problem a separator character of some sort (that isn't used in a normal email address at your site) is really wanted. > This seems like a strange way achieve flexible email addresses. Are you > aware of sub-addressing? It has been around for ages, and is supported > by Dovecot (and Gmail, incidentally). > > Imagine an existing email account <al...@example.com>. If alice wants to > use a subadress, she signs up with <alice+...@example.com>, and Dovecot > can automatically place incoming mail for that address into INBOX/foo > (or just INBOX if INBOX/foo does not exist). Alice can use as many > sub-adresses as she needs without anybody making config changes. This method works well, but the separator character can be a problem. "+" is traditional, but is widely blocked by website validators - if you can use "-" or "." instead they're much more likely to be accepted.