However as is always the case with averages, that figure encompass a large number of people with one address and a reasonable number with many addresses. For a humerous view on how many some have, view this cartoon published by PHD comics on the subject.
Commonly, multiple email addresses come into the category of “my work, my personal and my spam catcher”. (The spam catcher being the email address you give out when signing up with online forms and you're not sure of the use they will make of your email address).
Or another category of person using multiple addresses is the professional who has multiple business affiliations – for example a contractor who contributes work to several organisations can easily have email addresses at each of these businesses. One author talked of how every time he set up a new site for a volunteer organisation he acquired a new email address.
For those that have many addresses, the question is not so much "how many is too many" but rather how to manage them effectively.
How then to manage them? Logging in and checking multiple sites is a time waster and invariably means that some addresses get checked less often.
"“Managing multiple email accounts and constantly checking many accounts can be a hassle. I literally have to write down my user name and passwords for all the accounts just so I can keep up,”
Most people now with multiple addresses think in terms of directing them to a single inbox – a unified inbox. For those that think this simply means one inbox with a lot of poorly filtered messages, it's worth exploring what the world of filters is capable of.
The product you choose to manage these multiple addresses can make a major difference to your personal effectiveness. Unified Inbox is designed to increase personal effectiveness by allowing you to easily manage multiple email accounts, from one login anywhere in the world.
