You’ve probably arrived at this page because you want to shorten your email address, right? Well, let me state this at the very beginning – the solution to this quagmire might be either simple, a little convoluted or not available at all! It all depends on the email service you use.
In order to shorten the email ID, you need to change the email address. An email address, as you would know, consists of two parts: someone@somewhere. The “someone” part before the ‘at’ (@) sign is referred to as the email ID (or account ID, if you like). Generally, it is also the username you use to access your email account. The part that follows the ‘at’ (@) sign is the server address or domain name.
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Changing the email address would result in creation of a new (different) account. As mentioned above, the first part of the email address is the ID and if it is modified the email address would change. Generally, there is no direct option to change the email ID, but there are always workarounds available. Let us explore.
Note: There are many different types of email accounts. I’m confident that one of the solutions presented below would work for you. If not, write to me with details.
Shortening Gmail, Hotmail or Yahoo email address
Shortening an email address wouldn’t have been problematic if there wasn’t the issue of transferring messages from the older account to the new email ID. Fortunately, all the three popular email services (Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail) let you create additional email accounts to which you can forward the messages from old account. Of the three, Gmail gives you the maximum flexibility in forwarding, although Yahoo’s solution is quite elegant too. Please check the following links for step by step instructions. Remember, to shorten an email address, all you need to do is to create a new ID and have the messages transferred to it.
I only mention Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo here because they are the most popular. If you use a different service you would need to check up the forwarding options under the settings section.
Email from ISP is too long – how to short that address?
Most ISPs would not let you shorten the email ID… but there can be exceptions. Call up the company support and ask them if shortening of the email address is possible. The alternative is to have emails from the ISP account forwarded to a web based service such as Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail. Read about advantages and disadvantages of using an ISP email account as your primary address for online correspondence.
Cannot shorten the email address because it’s not allowed by service I use
Again, shortening an email address generally means decreasing the length of the email ID which would result in creation of a new account. If this is not permitted by the service, I suggest you get a new email address and have the messages forwarded to it from the old account – if that is possible!
I want to shorten the domain name part!
So you want to shorten the domain name part of the email address? This is a different ball game altogether. Again, you can think of creating a new email account on a service that gives a shorter domain name and have messages transferred to it. You can also create your own email address by using a personalized domain name – refer that article for details.
eShorten is a fee-based service that lets you decrease the length of your present email address by offering a new, presumably shorter, one. Contacts now send messages to this new account and the emails will then be forwarded to your existing ID. Simple and effective solution, right? However, I haven’t used it and thus cannot vouch for it. My only concern is the ‘loss’ of email messages or the delay in delivery when the eShorten server goes down (offline). The price of a shoter email address from this service starts at $2.95 per year.
Final note: Yahoo! Mail users can pick up ymail.com domain for the new Yahoo email ID – this is shorter that rocketmail.com. Similarly Hotmail subscribers can choose live.com rather than the longer hotmail.com.
