Is it ok to use uppercase letters in an email address?

Question

If I send an email to [email protected] instead of [email protected], could there be any problems with delivery because of the uppercase letters?

Solution 1

[email protected] / [email protected]

Technically these are different email addresses, however, you are probably OK.

The domain part of the email address (example.com) is not case-sensitive. So "ExaMple.com" is the same as "example.com". However, the recipient (local-part) is potentially case-sensitive, so "Hello" is different to "hello". Having said that, real world mail servers tend not to enforce this (I have never encountered one that does) - as it is simply confusing and prone to user error.

If you are storing email addresses then you probably should store them in their original case (the recipient at least) to be safe. However, always compare them case-insensitively in order to avoid duplicates.

From RFC 2821 - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol:

The local-part of a mailbox MUST BE treated as case sensitive. Therefore, SMTP implementations MUST take care to preserve the case of mailbox local-parts. Mailbox domains are not case sensitive. In particular, for some hosts the user "smith" is different from the user "Smith". However, exploiting the case sensitivity of mailbox local-parts impedes interoperability and is discouraged.

Solution 2

Most SMTP servers are fine with uppercase characters. However, some do differentiate between upper and lower case characters in the recipient part. The domain part is case insensitive.

For example, google mail does not differentiate between upper and lower case recipients.

I recommend you check with the concerned server admin or leave them a question to query the same.

Comments

[freedev]

Actually google doesn't differentiate also if you add one or more dots in the local-part. I.e.: [email protected] is the same of [email protected]

[Steve]

Old question, but it just popped to the top. In gmail, as well as what @freedev pointed out, you can tag sites that you give your email address e.g. [email protected] or [email protected] - that way if that site spams you or sells your address, you will have some sort of trail back to them.