Every service wants an email, and my inbox pays for it
A small frustration that turned into Mailriz.
Every time I sign up for something new, I am asked for an email address. I hand over the same one, and slowly my inbox fills with things I never asked for.
Why aliases
If every service gets its own address, two things immediately improve. Spam becomes traceable — if an address I only ever used in one place suddenly gets busy, I know exactly who leaked it. And that address can be switched off without disturbing anything else.
Why not an existing service
Third-party alias services solve the problem but move the dependency. The addresses live on their domain. If the service shuts down or changes its pricing, every address goes with it.
If the aliases are on your own domain, they last as long as the domain does.
What I ended up building
Mailriz: unlimited aliases on your own domain, all landing in one inbox, running entirely on Cloudflare with no server to maintain.
I shared it thinking it was only my problem. It turned out plenty of people felt the same.