How RealNames Works

Professional email forwarding that changes your address, not your inbox

Your email has three layers

Most people think of email as one thing. It's actually three separate layers:

• Address — what appears after the @ (gmail.com, smith.net, johnson.com)
• Service — where your email is actually stored (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo)
• App — what you use to read and write email (Gmail app, Apple Mail, Outlook)

Most people have all three bundled together. A typical Gmail user has a Gmail address, stored on Google's servers, read through the Gmail app.

What happens when someone emails you

1. Someone sends an email to john@smith.net
2. RealNames instantly forwards it to your existing inbox (Gmail, Yahoo, wherever you chose)
3. It arrives like any other email — in your regular inbox, on your regular app
4. You reply — and with a one-time reply-to setting, your reply shows john@smith.net as the sender

The person on the other end sees john@smith.net. They have no way of knowing the email forwards anywhere. Your professional surname email address is what they see and what they get.

The one-time setup

After purchasing your address, setup takes about two minutes:

RealNames configures email forwarding automatically — your new address starts receiving email right away. You then receive an email with a simple guide to set your reply-to address in Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or iCloud, so your replies show your new professional address instead of your old one.

After that, everything is automatic. No ongoing maintenance, no software to install, no passwords to remember.

Provider-specific setup guides are available at realnames.com/support.

What doesn't change

When you get a RealNames address, here's everything that stays exactly the same:

• Your existing inbox
• Your contacts and sent mail history
• Your email app
• Your old email address (it keeps working)

The only thing that changes is the address you give people. Instead of cooldude92@aol.com, you give them john@smith.net.