# Alumni Forwarding > Enterprise email forwarding service for university alumni. > Enables higher education institutions to provide lifetime institutional email addresses at a fraction of the cost of Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. --- ## Blog ### Uncategorized #### Princeton just cut alumni email forwarding. The tradeoff was avoidable. URL: https://alumniforwarding.com/blog/princeton-alumni-email-forwarding-decision/ Description: Princeton's Office of Information Technology ended alumni email forwarding for the Class of 2026, citing Google Workspace storage and licensing. The math is real. The decision is still the wrong one. Princeton's Office of Information Technology announced in February that it will end alumni email forwarding for the Class of 2026 and beyond. Undergraduate NetIDs now expire 60 days after graduation instead of 65, and the 430-day forwarding window that used to carry student email to a new alumni address disappears entirely. The rationale, according to the university spokesperson, is "licensing for software used at the University, access to resources as an active member of the University and increased cyber threats." The translation is straightforward: Google Workspace storage is finite, security and licensing costs scale with active mailboxes, and the easiest line item to delete is the one supporting people who no longer pay tuition. The math is real. The decision is also the wrong call. The forwarding problem is real, but it is not a storage problem What Princeton is solving for, in practice, is storage and license cost on Google Workspace EDU. When Google capped institutional storage, every higher-ed IT team had to make a hard decision about what to keep alive after a student left. The trap is that "alumni email forwarding" sounds like the same line item as "alumni mailbox." It is not. A forwarding entry costs... --- #### How Google Storage Caps Impact University Alumni Email URL: https://alumniforwarding.com/blog/google-workspace-storage-changes/ Description: Google capped education storage at 100 TB, breaking the alumni email model. Here is how universities solve it with email forwarding instead. Google capped education storage at 100 TB in July 2022, forcing universities to rethink alumni email accounts that consume shared storage without active use. Email forwarding eliminates storage entirely - alumni keep their @school.edu address while messages route directly to their personal inbox. For years, universities made their alumni a simple promise: keep your school email address for life. Google Workspace for Education made that promise easy to keep with unlimited storage and no per-user fees. Then, in July 2022, Google changed the deal. The change was straightforward but seismic: Google capped all education accounts at 100 TB of pooled storage per institution, shared across every user and every Google app. For schools with tens of thousands of alumni accounts sitting alongside active students and faculty, the math suddenly didn't work anymore. The storage cap isn't the only change. Google has also tightened enforcement around inactive accounts, pushing universities to deprovision alumni who don't log in regularly.Source: Google Workspace for Education storage policy FAQ What This Looks Like on the Ground Here's a scenario playing out at universities right now - and it's not hypothetical. We've heard versions of this story from IT leaders at schools across the country. A... --- #### Route Alumni Email via Google Workspace or Office 365 URL: https://alumniforwarding.com/blog/university-email-routing-setup/ Description: Step-by-step guide to routing alumni email through Google Workspace or Office 365 to a forwarding service. No DNS changes required. The fastest way to offload alumni email from your institution is to route it through your existing Google Workspace or Office 365 environment. No DNS changes. No new MX records on your primary domain. Alumni keep their original @school.edu addresses and never know anything changed. This guide walks through the technical setup for both platforms. The whole process takes about 30 minutes of admin time. How the Routing Works The concept is the same regardless of platform. Your email system acts as the first stop - it checks whether the recipient is a local user (current student, faculty, staff). If they are, mail delivers normally. If the recipient doesn't exist locally, the email routes to Alumni Forwarding, where we look them up and forward to their personal inbox. Email Flow: 1. Incoming email to jane@school.edu 2. Google Workspace / Office 365 checks local directory 3. If user is found - Delivers to local mailbox 4. If user is unknown - Routes to Alumni Forwarding 5. Alumni Forwarding performs lookup and forwards to personal inbox (or rejects if not found) Before You Begin Make sure these prerequisites are in place: - Your Alumni Forwarding service has been provisioned and configured to... --- #### Why Princeton Dropped Alumni Email Forwarding URL: https://alumniforwarding.com/blog/princeton-email-forwarding/ Description: In November 2023, Princeton University discontinued alumni email forwarding for 16,000 alumni due to authentication challenges. Learn how forwarding services solve it. In November 2023, Princeton University announced they would discontinue their alumni email forwarding service by June 30, 2024, affecting nearly 16,000 alumni. Their reason? "Security concerns have reached a tipping point," forcing them to abandon a service they'd provided for decades. Princeton's story isn't unique - it's happening at universities nationwide. But it highlights exactly why professional alumni forwarding services exist, and why the technical approach matters more than ever. The Authentication Crisis That Broke University Email Forwarding Mark Ratliff, Princeton's Director of Cloud Infrastructure Services, put it bluntly: "The world and especially the big email providers are clamping down on email authentication. They are less tolerant of emails that appear to be spoofed." Here's what Princeton discovered was happening to their 16,000 alumni: - Regional alumni club event invitations were being blocked as suspected phishing attempts - Email servers couldn't authenticate forwarded messages, causing automatic rejection - Security frameworks now require that the authenticated server sending the email matches the "from address" - Simple forwarding breaks this authentication chain, making messages appear suspicious Warning: Princeton's IT team warned that "in the near future many email servers will not deliver messages that pass through a forwarding email address." The writing... --- #### The Complete Alumni Email Forwarding Solution URL: https://alumniforwarding.com/blog/alumni-email-management/ Description: Manage alumni email at scale with self-service portals, API integration, and enterprise security. Purpose-built for Universities. Universities manage alumni email at scale by replacing full mailboxes with a purpose-built forwarding platform - self-service portals let alumni update their own forwarding address, API and CSV integration syncs with existing alumni databases, and enterprise-grade authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, ARC) protects the institutional domain. This eliminates the storage, licensing, and support overhead of maintaining tens of thousands of full email accounts. The Challenge of Alumni Email Management Universities face unique challenges when it comes to email solutions for alumni: - Resource Intensive - Traditional email systems require significant storage and maintenance - Administrative Overhead - Managing thousands of individual accounts is time-consuming - Security Concerns - Inactive accounts can become security vulnerabilities - Alumni Expectations - Graduates expect lifelong email services from their alma mater Our Solution: The Alumni Forwarding Portal Our Alumni Forwarding system eliminates these challenges by providing a streamlined email forwarding service that benefits both your institution and your alumni. For Your Institution: Administrative Control & Efficiency Our administrative interface gives you complete control while minimizing the workload: - Bulk Management - Add, update, or remove forwards through API, portal or CSV. - API Integration - Connect with your existing systems (Salesforce, Active Directory, etc.) for... --- #### How Universities Cut Alumni Email Costs by 99% URL: https://alumniforwarding.com/blog/cutting-email-costs/ Description: Universities are cutting alumni email costs by switching from Google Workspace and Office 365 to modern email forwarding. Here's how. Universities cut alumni email costs by replacing full Google Workspace or Office 365 mailboxes with dedicated email forwarding - dropping per-user costs from $3.60/year to $0.14/year while alumni keep their @school.edu address. With cloud platforms raising prices and tightening educational licensing, maintaining full accounts for tens of thousands of graduates has become unsustainable. Yet alumni cherish their university email addresses as a lifelong connection to their alma mater. Alumni connections remain valuable long after graduation Leading institutions have found a powerful solution that both addresses these rising costs and maintains this crucial connection: modern email forwarding systems designed specifically for alumni management. The Growing Challenges Universities face several key challenges with traditional alumni email approaches: - Evolving License Models - Major cloud platforms continue to change their educational licensing structures, often eliminating previously available free tiers or discounts for alumni accounts. - Storage Requirements - Alumni accounts accumulate data over decades, requiring ever-expanding storage infrastructure and associated resource allocation. - Technical Support Burden - Managing thousands of full email accounts creates substantial IT support requirements that divert resources from core institutional needs. - Security Concerns - Each active account represents a potential security vector that must be monitored and maintained... --- #### Why Email Security Matters for University Alumni Networks URL: https://alumniforwarding.com/blog/email-security-university-alumni/ Description: Explore the critical security considerations for educational institutions managing thousands of alumni email addresses and how to protect your brand. University alumni email security demands special attention because every @school.edu address is a live extension of the institution's brand, reputation, and security perimeter - often for decades after graduation, across tens of thousands of accounts the university no longer directly controls. That combination of scale, longevity, and limited oversight creates a unique security challenge that requires specialized solutions. Email security has become a critical concern for educational institutions With high-profile data breaches and email-based attacks regularly making headlines, protecting alumni email infrastructure has never been more important. This is especially true as many universities transition from fully-managed accounts to more cost-effective forwarding solutions. Why University Alumni Email Security Demands Special Attention The Scale Challenge Unlike typical corporate environments where email accounts are deprovisioned when employees leave, university alumni email addresses often persist for decades across tens or hundreds of thousands of graduates. - Managing security for email accounts that may remain active for 60+ years - Securing forwarding for users who rarely interact with university IT systems - Maintaining protection across email destinations the university doesn't control - Protecting institutional reputation when emails appear to come from university domains The Brand Risk When an alumnus uses a university.edu email address,... ---