This site contains helpful guides for using the Port87 email service at https://mail.port87.com
You can create your free account at Port87 to get started.
If you need additional support, you can email our support staff at support-help@port87.com
¶ A new kind of email.
Port87 introduces the concept of "Label Powered Email". Instead of giving out the same email address to every service you use, you give out individually labeled addresses, like yourname-netflix@port87.com for Netflix and yourname-amazon@port87.com for Amazon. Port87 uses these labeled addresses to deliver your email into the correct label when it arrives.
Using labeled addresses has many advantages over traditional email:
- Email is organized on delivery.
- Labels can have individual settings, like notifications and mark-as-read.
- Labels can be blocked if that address leaks online.
- Phishing attempts are very obvious when they arrive in the wrong label.
Unlike other email services that support subaddressing (also known as plus addressing when the delimiter is "+"), Port87 automatically chooses the right from address when you send a message from a label. Port87 is built around subaddressing, so it is not treated as an afterthought like it is with other services.
¶ Screening Labels
One of the biggest advantages to Port87 is that you can enable screening on any of your labels. This allows the label to only receive mail from people, not bots. When a message arrives to a label with screening, an automated reply is sent to the sender asking them to prove they are human. Once they complete the screening process, their address becomes verified, and their original message is delivered. Verified senders can then send messages to that label freely.
Every account starts off with a "Friends" label (yourname-friends@port87.com) with screening enabled. You can give this address to all of your friends, and you'll never have to worry about spam. A large portion of spam doesn't even have a valid return address, so no one is even there to verify, meaning there's no chance you'll ever see that spam.
¶ The Aggbox
Since your email is already organized when it arrives, there's no need for an inbox. Port87 introduces the concept of an "aggbox" (aggregation box). You decide which labels are shown in your aggbox, and you only see messages in those labels when you view it. If you uncheck the aggbox checkbox for a label, instantly, the email no longer appears in your aggbox. There's no need to move messages, because the aggbox isn't a real place. It's a virtual space for only your most important messages.
¶ Your Bare Address
Every Port87 user has a bare address that is just the unlabeled form of the address (yourname@port87.com). This address is special in Port87. Email addressed to your bare address triggers an autoreply with a list of your "public label" addresses. By enabling the public checkbox for a label, that label's address will be included in this list. This has big advantages:
- Your bare address can be given out freely without worrying about spam.
- You can define labels for all of the reasons someone will email you to this address.
- The sender categorizes their email, meaning your account stays organized.
For example, if you manage a community theatre, you can have the public address yourname-theatre@port87.com. Then when someone finds your address online and emails you about the theatre, they'll see that address and use it.
¶ Support for Anonymized Email Services
Port87 is not an anonymous email service. Your username is visible in all of your addresses. However, Port87 should work well with any anonymizing email services. Just use your labeled address when you sign up for the anonymizing service, and the service will forward emails to and from the right label in Port87.
Many services block addresses from anonymous email services, so we've made the conscious decision to not provide anonymous addresses on the port87.com domain. We do understand the value of maintaining your privacy through anonymous addresses, though, so we do not block anonymizing services, and we encourage you to use them with Port87 to enhance your online privacy.
¶ We Don't Use AI
Port87 does not use your email to train AI. Port87 also does not use AI to read your email. We do not use AI in the development of Port87. Port87's code is written by real people, and much of it is open source.
We do not use AI for a number of reasons:
- Training AI on private email content can leak private information. It is possible to craft a prompt to retrieve verbatim copies of real emails used to train them.
- Using AI to read email can introduce security vulnerabilities. Agentic AI can be targeted using a technique called "prompt injection" to divulge private information to malicious third parties.
- AI is prone to hallucinations and inaccurate results.
- AI generated code is unreliable, unmaintainable, and prone to security vulnerabilities.
- AI generated code may infringe on the copyrights of the developers whose code was used to train the AI. In fact, testing has shown that AI generated code has already infringed on our copyrights.
- AI does not provide enough value to justify its astronomical cost, both monetary and environmental. In fact, we struggle to see any value AI provides, considering the real threat of security vulnerabilities and inaccuracies.
We value your privacy, and we do not and will not mess around with unproven and unreliable technologies when your privacy is on the line. As such, we currently have no plans to introduce any features that rely on large language models or any other kind of generative AI.
If you are currently using an email provider that offers such features, we strongly encourage you to switch to a provider that doesn't.
