April 10, 20265 min readsimplelogin, migration, how-to

Migrate from SimpleLogin to SecureAlias in 5 minutes

Switching alias providers without losing mail. The exact steps, in order, with the gotchas called out.

You've been on SimpleLogin. It's solid. We covered why we built SecureAlias when SimpleLogin already exists — short version: virus scanning, tracker stripping, and unlimited aliases on the free tier.

If you've decided to switch, here's the entire migration. It takes about five minutes for most people. The rest of the post is "things that look easy but bite you if you skip them" — read those even if you skip the rest.

The five-minute version

Sign up at secureinseconds.com (free, no card).
Verify your forwarding email — the real address you want mail to land in. Same one you use with SimpleLogin is fine.
Export your SimpleLogin aliases: in SimpleLogin, Settings → Data → Export aliases. You'll get a CSV with every alias and its destination.
Re-create your top 5-10 aliases in SecureAlias. Use the same custom domain if you want; otherwise the system gives you ones on our domain.
Update those 5-10 services to use the new aliases. Start with the noisiest senders (newsletters, e-commerce). Leave the rest forwarding through SimpleLogin until you've tested everything.

That's the whole thing. Now the gotchas.

Gotcha 1: Don't disable SimpleLogin yet

Aliases stop forwarding the moment SimpleLogin disables them. If you switch your account login email at a service and then disable the SimpleLogin alias before that service has confirmed the new address, you can lock yourself out — no password reset email reaches you because the old alias is dead.

Rule: keep SimpleLogin paid and active for at least two weeks while you migrate. Cancel only after every service that mattered has confirmed the new address.

Gotcha 2: Don't move security-critical accounts first

Counter-intuitive: the accounts you care about most should move last, not first.

The first batch should be low-stakes things — newsletters, free trials, shopping. If the migration breaks for one of them, the worst case is you miss a marketing email.

The last batch should be your bank, your password manager, your registrar, your work accounts. By then you've validated the SecureAlias forwarding chain on twenty other services and you know it's working.

Gotcha 3: Custom domain MX records

If you've been using a custom domain on SimpleLogin (alias.your-name.com or similar), and you want to keep it on SecureAlias, you have to switch the MX records to point at our mail servers instead of SimpleLogin's.

The instant you flip MX records, mail to all aliases on that subdomain stops going to SimpleLogin and starts going to SecureAlias. There's no in-between. So:

Re-create every alias you actively use in SecureAlias before flipping MX.
Confirm each alias works by sending a test email from somewhere external.
Then flip MX.

Don't flip first and re-create after. In-flight emails during that gap will bounce.

If you'd rather not deal with DNS at all, just use the default @you.com aliases on our domain. Custom domains are optional.

Gotcha 4: Replies-through-alias

Both SimpleLogin and SecureAlias support replying to a forwarded email so the recipient sees your alias, not your real address. The mechanism is the same on both sides — the forwarder rewrites the Reply-To. But the reply addresses are not interoperable.

If you've memorized SimpleLogin's reply-format ("reply.UUID@simplelogin.io"), forget it. SecureAlias uses a different scheme. You don't have to learn it — your email client just hits Reply and we handle the rest. But muscle memory might bite.

Gotcha 5: 2FA setup keys

If you used a SimpleLogin alias as the email-of-record for 2FA-protected accounts (Coinbase, banks, etc.), make sure the new alias is fully set up before you change the address on those accounts. If you change the address and 2FA needs to send a verification email, and the new alias isn't forwarding yet, you're locked out.

Recommendation: for any 2FA-protected account, do this in one sitting:

Add the new alias as a secondary email on the account.
Verify the new alias is receiving mail (look for the verification email).
Promote the new alias to primary.
Remove the old SimpleLogin alias from the account.
Do not disable the SimpleLogin alias for at least 7 days.

Bulk migration?

If you have more than 50 active aliases and don't fancy re-creating each by hand, send us your SimpleLogin export and we'll bulk-import. We'll match aliases to your account, create them on our side, and let you know which ones need attention (e.g. ones that conflict with another user's existing alias on our shared domain).

After the migration

Things to verify in the first week:

Inbound mail: pick three migrated services and check that mail flows.
Outbound mail: send one reply through an alias to confirm the recipient sees the alias, not your real address.
Tracker stripping: open a marketing email from any sender that uses tracking. Compare what arrives via the new alias vs. what arrived via SimpleLogin in your archive — you should see fewer remote images, fewer redirect URLs.
Attachment scanning: send yourself a test email with an attachment from another email account. Check the headers in your inbox; you should see SecureAlias scan markers in the email source.

If anything looks wrong, reply to your welcome email and we'll fix it. (This is the actual link your welcome email comes from, so the address is real.)

When NOT to switch

We're not for everyone. If you require:

Self-hosting: SimpleLogin is open-source and self-hostable. We're a managed service.
Open-source code: we're closed-source for now (small team, moving fast). Maybe later.
Specific Proton ecosystem features (single sign-on with Proton Mail, Proton Bridge, etc.): if you live in Proton's world, the integration story is better there.

In all of those cases, stay on SimpleLogin. Both tools can coexist — you can use SecureAlias for new signups and SimpleLogin for existing ones if you don't want to migrate.

Ready to switch?

Start migrating →