Draft:Forward Email

• Comment: We aren't dumb; using archives to prevent the references section from looking like a Christmas Tree won't fool anyone. --Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 23:49, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: Use third-party sources. The website of the subject is not an acceptable source. Urban Versis 32^KB ⚡ ^{(talk / contribs)} 04:11, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: References to the subject's own website do not confer notability Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 22:48, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

---

Forward Email

Available in	English, Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese
Headquarters	United States
Owner	Forward Email LLC
URL	forwardemail.net
IPv6 support	Yes
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional
Launched	November 5, 2017 (2017-11-05)
Current status	Online
Content license	BUSL-1.1 AND MPL-2.0
Written in	JavaScript and Node.js

Forward Email is an email forwarding service that focuses on privacy and security. Founded in November 2017 by Nick Baugh, the service allows users to create and manage email addresses on custom domains that forward to their primary email accounts. Forward Email has expanded beyond email forwarding to offer SMTP, IMAP, POP3, and CalDAV services.

The service is developed as an open-source project with its code publicly available. Forward Email maintains its own infrastructure rather than relying on third-party providers. The service implements encryption technology including SQLite mailboxes with encryption for data storage.

The service is operated by Forward Email LLC, a United States-based company, with its code available on GitHub.

History

Founding and Early Development

Forward Email was launched in November 2017 by Nick Baugh, a software developer who previously worked at DuckDuckGo. The service was created in response to challenges with self-hosted email solutions. In a Hacker News discussion, Baugh explained that he developed Forward Email as "a great alternative to trying to set up your own small mail server."

The service began as an email forwarding solution with privacy and security as design considerations.

Growth and Evolution

After its initial release in November 2017, Forward Email gradually expanded its infrastructure and feature set. The service allows users to create custom email addresses on their own domains that forward to their primary email accounts, enabling them to maintain a professional online presence while managing communications through a single inbox.

Public Launch and Recognition

In October 2019, Abhi Nemani, the former Chief Data Officer for the City of Los Angeles, noted his switch to Forward Email, describing it as "Simple and painless (and free!)".

On November 23, 2020, Forward Email officially launched out of its beta program. David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of Basecamp, commented on the service on Twitter, describing it as "a forwarding service for email that doesn't keep logs or store emails, and which works with ARC to ensure signed forwards don't trip email filters."

Recent Developments

From 2021 through 2025, Forward Email continued to develop its feature set and infrastructure. The service transitioned to a JavaScript and Node.js stack and added support for email forwarding aliases with regular expressions.

In 2023, Forward Email added IMAP support, POP3 capabilities, and additional security features. Bitwarden, a password manager, added support for Forward Email in their username generator as part of version 2023.7 released in July 2023, following a community contribution. The feature was implemented through GitHub pull request #4809, which was merged on June 9, 2023, allowing Forward Email to be used as a forwarded email alias provider in Bitwarden's username generator.

Features and Technology

Core Features

Forward Email provides email services including forwarding, storage, and sending capabilities.

Email Forwarding

The primary feature of Forward Email is email forwarding, which allows users to:

• Create custom email addresses on their own domains that forward to their primary email accounts
• Set up custom domain names and email addresses
• Configure multiple recipients for a single address
• Implement wildcard addresses (catch-all functionality)
• Create disposable email addresses
• Configure "Send mail as" functionality with Gmail and Outlook

Email Storage and Access

Forward Email offers email storage and access solutions:

• IMAP Support: Allows users to access their emails through standard email clients
• POP3 Support: Enables another protocol for email retrieval
• CalDAV Support: Provides calendar functionality

Outbound Email

Forward Email provides outbound SMTP capabilities:

• Email sending via SMTP protocol
• Email sending through API requests
• Queue and retry systems for email delivery

Industry Integration and Recommendations

Forward Email has been integrated into various software tools and platforms:

• Cloudflare, a major web infrastructure company, includes Forward Email in their documentation for vendor-specific DNS records, providing configuration guidance for users who want to use Forward Email with Cloudflare's DNS services.

• The npm package "email-templates" recommends Forward Email as their default transport service for sending emails.

• React Email, a framework for building email templates with React, includes documentation on using Forward Email with Nodemailer for sending emails.

• The Email Sending Guide, a resource for SaaS builders, lists Forward Email as one of their recommended transactional email providers, describing it as "the only 100% open-source email encrypted email service" that supports "unlimited domains and aliases for no extra cost" and offers various features including SMTP, IMAP, POP3, and email API capabilities.

Technical Infrastructure

Privacy and Security Architecture

Forward Email's technical architecture includes:

• Independent Infrastructure: Forward Email operates without third-party email service providers.
• Encryption Technology: The service uses encrypted SQLite mailboxes with ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption.
• TLS Encryption: Used for communications.

Open-Source Development

Forward Email's code is publicly available on GitHub, allowing for:

• Independent review
• Community contributions
• Verification of implementation

The team behind Forward Email maintains npm packages that collectively receive hundreds of millions of downloads per month, as shown by npm download statistics.

Reception

Reviews

Forward Email has received reviews on Trustpilot, maintaining a 4-star rating based on 92 reviews as of April 2025.

Industry Recognition

Forward Email has received attention from several figures and organizations in the technology industry:

• David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of Basecamp, mentioned Forward Email on Twitter in November 2020.

• Abhi Nemani, former Chief Data Officer for the City of Los Angeles, publicly endorsed switching to Forward Email from MailGun in October 2019.

• Bitwarden, a password manager, added support for Forward Email in their username generator in version 2023.7.

• Auth.js, an authentication framework of Next.js, includes Forward Email as an official provider for sending authentication emails.

• WildDuck Mail Server, an open-source email server project, lists Forward Email as a third-party project that integrates with their technology, describing it as "a 100% open-source and privacy-focused email service that combines WildDuck with an encrypted SQLite storage layer and offers IMAP/POP3/SMTP/CalDAV and more."

• ListMonk, an open-source newsletter and mailing list manager, added Forward Email as an official provider for sending emails.

Privacy Guides Inclusion

Forward Email is pending inclusion in Privacy Guides, a respected privacy-focused recommendation site that evaluates digital services based on stringent privacy and security criteria, with an open pull request at GitHub. Unlike other email providers recommended by Privacy Guides such as Proton Mail and Tutanota, Forward Email is the only service with a fully open-source backend, making it unique among the recommended providers.

The service meets Privacy Guides' requirements for email providers, including zero-access encryption for email account data at rest, export capability in standard formats, custom domain support, and operation on owned infrastructure rather than third-party email service providers. Forward Email also supports OpenPGP and Web Key Directory (WKD), features that Privacy Guides considers best practices for email services.

In February 2024, Nick Baugh (using the GitHub username "titanism") contributed to Privacy Guides by submitting a pull request to remove Skiff Mail from their recommendations after Skiff announced it was shutting down. This pull request was accepted and merged, demonstrating Forward Email's active involvement in maintaining accurate privacy recommendations. Skiff Mail, which had its own Wikipedia article, was acquired by Notion and subsequently shut down its email service.

Forward Email has actively engaged with the Privacy Guides community, implementing features requested in community discussions. In July 2024, they added encryption support for TXT records on their free plan, responding directly to requests from Privacy Guides users.

Business Model

Forward Email operates on a freemium business model, offering both free and paid tiers:

• Free Tier: Provides basic email forwarding functionality with limited features
• Paid Tiers: Offer additional features such as IMAP/POP3 access, increased storage, and enhanced security options

See also

• Email forwarding
• Email privacy
• Disposable email address
• Email alias

External links

• Official website
• Status page
• GitHub repository