Stop Creating New Gmail Accounts — Do This Instead

0:00 Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today, I’ll show you a built-in Gmail trick that lets you create unlimited email addresses from just one account. No extra sign-ins and no new inboxes. I’ll also show you how to use this for sign-ups, automatically filtering emails, and even tracking who shares your email address. Let me show you how this works. The first method is called plus addressing, and this is the one that you'll probably use the most. Let's say your email address is [email protected]. You can add a plus sign in any word you want before the @gmail.com. Like, let's say [email protected] or [email protected]. Now, even though these look like different email addresses,

0:47 Gmail delivers all of them to the same inbox. You don't need to create anything new. It just works automatically. The really powerful part is that Gmail recognizes the text after the plus sign. That means you can use it to create filters, labels, and rules. For example, any email sent to [email protected] can automatically get labeled as shopping, marked as read, or archived, and we'll look at how to do that in a moment. The second method uses dots in your Gmail address, and this one surprises a lot of people. In Gmail, dots in your email address don't matter at all. That means if your email is [email protected], then [email protected] goes to the exact same inbox. This works because Gmail

1:35 completely ignores dots when delivering email. Just like with plus addressing, websites see these as different email addresses, but Gmail treats them as one account behind the scenes. Now, this is really helpful if you want to visually split your first name and last name. [email protected] looks a lot cleaner and more readable, but again, Gmail treats it as the same address. Now, you might be wondering, why would anyone do this? This is where plus addressing really becomes powerful. Because Gmail recognizes everything after the plus sign, you can automatically organize your email as it arrives. To do this, go to the top of Gmail to the search field, and over on the right-hand side, let's click on show search options. Within the to field,

2:22 enter in the new plus address that you're using. So here, type in my main email, Kevin Stratvert, and then [email protected]. In the bottom right-hand corner, click on create filter, and here, you can choose what Gmail should do to the emails sent to that address. Right up on top, you could skip the inbox, mark it as read, I'll select mark as read, and then you could also apply label. I’ll click on that, and let's apply the shopping label. And over here, you have all sorts of different options. You could even delete the email. Then in the bottom right-hand corner, once you're done selecting all of your different options, click on create filter. From this point on, any email sent to that address is handled automatically. No more manual sorting required. This is perfect for things like newsletters, receipts, online shopping, or basically any

3:11 email you don't need to see immediately, but you still want to keep. Let me show you a few practical ways I actually use this. For newsletters and subscriptions, I'll use something like [email protected] and filter those emails into a newsletter label so they never clutter my main inbox. As a note, we have a newsletter that you could sign up for using the pinned comment down below. Try using this trick when you sign up for the newsletter. You also can get more specific. Instead of just + newsletter, you could use +Amazon or +Costco or +KevinStratvertNewsletter to make filtering and tracking even more precise. And that leads me to one of my favorite uses. You can track who shares your email address. If spam starts arriving at

3:56 a specific plus address, you'll immediately know which site leaked or sold your email. The key idea is simple. Every site gets its own address, but you still manage everything from just one inbox. And that's it. Your inbox is organized, and most importantly, your email now has a paper trail. One important note. This is Gmail specific. Other email providers don't always handle plus signs or dots the same way. If this helped, consider subscribing and I'll see you in the next one.