How Many Emails Should I Have? (Explained)

Despite the prominence of different chat apps and messengers, email is a basic need of the world.

According to research, the number of email users in 2020 was four billion and will increase to 4.6 billion by the end of 2025.

How many emails should a person have?

Is one enough or should you have multiple? Let’s answer these questions in this article.

How Many Emails Should I Have?

An average person should have four different emails, each email serving its own purpose.

Email accounts are like credit cards.

You should have at least one, but having more is better.

There should be different emails for personal and professional use.

The main point of having different emails is to maintain an efficient workflow, as using a single email address for many different purposes ends in tangled chaos.

The four different emails that you must have are:

Personal email
Business email
Billing and Finance Email
Junk Email

Now, let’s cover in detail the purpose of each of these four different emails.

1. Personal Email

The personal email address is for corresponding personal matters.

Exchange this type of email with your friends, family members, and other social affairs.

Remember not to use personal email for shopping or authentication purposes on the internet, e.g., as proof of authentication when you forgot the password of an online account or website.

If so, it becomes easy for spam to target you as a fake account.

In short, the personal email is only for personal use, don’t mix it with any business or other communication.

2. Business Email

Your business email is probably the one handed to you directly by your employer.

It deals with and exchanges information related to business matters only.

The rule of thumb is to keep your business email safe and separate from other emails.

Most companies and businesses have access to your business emails and thus monitor your activity there.

Therefore, it is of utmost importance to refrain from sending emails other than business-related ones from your business email address.

Any email that deviates outside working boundaries can get you in trouble and even cost you your job.

Companies can also become a target of phishing if employees are not responsible with their email usage.

3. Billing And Finance Email

The third type of email address should be linked to sensitive information only such as billing, finance, and banking.

When buying something online that requires your email address, you will be using this type of email account.

Similarly, use this email for online authentication of any account or dedicated access.

You will know what kind of information and emails to expect and from which source.

Therefore, any email from an unknown source can easily be recognized as a phishing email that needs to be simply discarded.

This email is quite helpful in keeping information safe and scams at bay.

4. Junk Email

Last but not least comes the Junk or the shopping/marketing email.

This is a broad email that receives all kinds of sale offers, discount coupons, and non-malicious spam emails.

For example, if you go out for lunch, and the restaurant claims to get free ice cream in exchange for your email or a survey, definitely Junk Email is going to earn you a good deal there!

In short, Junk Email is for sending and receiving all kinds of event notifications, sale offers, promotions, or any other merchandise.

Moreover, when buying from an eCommerce site as a guest, enter your email used for junk purposes to prevent anyone from getting access to your credentials in case your account gets compromised.

Apart from the four mentioned emails, having a backup email would also be great.

But since managing and organizing emails requires effort, go for the fifth one only if you think you can handle it.

A backup or master email is the back door email that is used to store all the important information of all four accounts.

Therefore, if any malicious user accesses your primary email, you can still have all the important data saved here.

Some users also mention their backup email in the password recovery option, making it easier to access the lost account once again.

Just remember that sensitive data should not be stored in any of your email addresses.

Why Should I Have More Than One Email Address? (6 Reasons)

Having one email is okay as long as you are a college student or a teenager.

However, once you step into the world of business and profession, you need different emails to keep things organized and arranged in different buckets.

Here are the top six reasons having more than one email is probably a better option.

1. Keeping Personal And Professional Spaces Separated

Personal emails are usually used for personal exchanges and may use any kind of username.

For professional life and business dealings, however, you need a more sophisticated and professional email address.

Usually, your professional email would have your name or your business name in it.

For example:

2. You Want To Be Anonymous

Being identifiable in a professional setting and daily communication is a necessity.

However, there are some locations where we all want to slip under the radar.

You can’t always let the public identify you.

You understand the wariness of public-facing websites quite well.

There are some places where you can’t use your professional email address and need to be anonymous.

For example, when commenting on posts, writing reviews as a market survey, etc., use any [email protected] email address.

3. You Want To Avoid Clogging By Spam

Another reason having multiple emails turns out beneficial is to avoid spam.

When you don’t want to clog your personal or professional email with lots of promotional codes and updates but want access to a service, you can enter the burner or spam email address.

For example, if you register to access a website, enter the designated email there, and keep your two primary emails safe from getting cluttered with extra emails.

4. Running A Marketing Campaign

When running a marketing campaign, you send a blast of messages to multiple recipients and get a response back, too.

No one wants that flush back in their primary account, so keeping a separate account can help you successfully carry out your marketing campaigns without cluttering the primary emails.

5. Shared Account

When working with vendors or as a team, you often need to share the same account for the purpose of easy access to all the members about the latest information.

In that case, a team login works better because no one risks sharing a personal or professional email with any user.

6. Improve Security

Lastly, having multiple emails leads to various security benefits as well.

Try not to enter your primary two emails for any online use.

For bank accounts and other services, use the billing email.

For online services, junk email has your back.

This way, all personal and professional information remains safe from hackers and other security issues.

What Are The Privacy Threats When Using One Email Address?

Hundreds of privacy threats are waiting on the web for you if you let down your guard and let them attack your email and collect the necessary information.

If you have only one email account, all of your information is at risk.

The most common ways in which the attacker can target you through emails are…

Phishing. The criminal tricks you by sending a fake email that steals the information as soon as you open the email. The bogus emails usually offer some kind of reward—for example, a giveaway—compelling you to open it.
Malware. You receive this as an email attachment with a download. As soon as you download it, the malware infects the email and can damage your important data and business files. Malware often is used to get some professional information.
Credential Stuffing. The criminal gathers information from your social media accounts to guess your password and get access.

Now, as soon as some random person hacks or accesses your only primary email, it can impact you in several ways.

For example, it can…

Use your personal information like address, pictures, credit card details, etc.
Get access to your business and professional world. It can collect all the useful information.
Spread phishing to all the emails you have contact with.
Steal your identity.

How Does Having Multiple Emails Help Cope With Security Issues?

If your email security or privacy is breached, it leaves deadly consequences.

One of the best ways to increase your email security is by using multiple accounts.

In this way, your private and professional identities will remain safe as no one has access to them other than your family and the business group.

Since most of the attackers get our emails from eCommerce sites when we buy or through websites we register online, it is better to keep a separate email for this purpose, which includes no personal data or important information.

Apart from this, there are several other ways to improve the security and privacy of your emails.

Some of the practices are:

Use a strong password. It should not be a common password and try not to include any personal information in it.
Never use the same username and password for the multiple emails you have. It increases the chances of hacking and identity theft many times.
Don’t fill in the unnecessary information on the online forms or surveys. The more information you give, the higher the chances that your information will fall into the wrong hands, resulting in phishing and malware.
When you use public WiFi, always use a VPN so that the snoops can’t steal your data. The VPN makes you anonymous.
Turn on two-factor authentication that sends a one-time password every time a new device tries to log in.
Try to recognize phishing attempts and not open the emails you find bogus or you can’t verify the legitimacy of.

Is There A Limit To How Many Emails I Can Have?

There is no limit to the number of email addresses you can have.

You can create as many email addresses as you want.

However, since managing too many of them can be quite difficult, it’s better to limit yourself to four or five emails, each having a separate purpose.

How Many Email Addresses Does An Average Person Have?

There is no doubt that having multiple emails is necessary to reduce the chances of hacking and to manage information effectively.

However, according to the Radicati Email Statistics, on average, a person uses one to two accounts.

However, now people prefer using multiple email addresses.

The average email address per person in 2018 was 1.75, which has now increased to 1.86.

How Do You Manage Multiple Emails? The 5 Easy Ways!

The reason behind having multiple emails is to become more organized so that you can give various types of emails the desired time, and you don’t have to waste hours sorting between useful and spam emails.

At times, though, the multiple accounts can be chaos if not handled properly.

Here are five tested ways to manage multiple emails effortlessly.

1. Frequently Checking Emails

Checking the emails frequently saves you a chunk of time as compared to checking all the emails in one sitting.

Moreover, only check your business and personal email more frequently, like early in the morning, after lunch, before going to sleep, and whenever you have a pocket of free time.

Delete or mark emails as spam when necessary.

2. Different Browsers For Different Emails

Using one browser for only one email address cuts down the time it takes to check various emails.

You don’t need to log out of one email in order to log in to another.

You can open and check them in one go.

Some browsers that support multiple emails are Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.

3. Forward Important Emails To One Backup (Master) Account

Send all of your important inboxes to one master account or backup account so that you don’t have to spend time finding the inbox again and again in different email addresses.

Get them saved in one email.