Self-Hosted Email Alias Manager: Aliases You Control

An email alias is a disposable address on your domain that forwards to a real mailbox. The classic use: hand out newsletters@yourdomain instead of your personal address. A self-hosted email alias manager gives you unlimited aliases without trusting a third-party service.

Aliases vs catch-all

• Exact aliases — newsletters@yourdomain → your inbox. Clean and predictable.
• Catch-all — anything@yourdomain → your inbox. Great for per-site addresses, risky for spam.
• Hybrid — catch-all forwards everything, filters block the noise. This is what most people actually want.

Rules that behave like an alias manager

1. Create an exact rule: newsletters@yourdomain → forward to your inbox.
2. Create a catch-all: *@yourdomain → forward to the same inbox.
3. Add a blacklist for senders you regret giving an address to.

Deleting an alias is deleting its rule — instant, no DNS changes, no MX wait.

Keeping an audit trail

Because every alias is a rule, a management panel shows which alias received what: per-rule stats, searchable history, full archive. Throwaway addresses become a deliberate system.

Privacy angle

Self-hosting keeps the alias → inbox mapping in your own D1, not on an alias provider’s servers. Revoke the panel’s access and aliases keep working — they are just Cloudflare routing rules.

FAQ

Is catch-all enough without exact rules? For most people yes, plus a blacklist. Exact rules are for aliases you keep even if catch-all is off.