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How to Whitelist an Email Address in Google: A Simple Guide

It is important to whitelist an email address so that important emails don’t end up in the spam or junk folder.

Gmail, Google’s email service, makes it quick and simple to put an email address on a whitelist. By adding an email address to the whitelist, you can ensure that all emails from that address will be delivered to your inbox.

Be aware, whitelisting an email address in Gmail does not guarantee that all emails from that address will be delivered to your inbox. Gmail’s spam filter is constantly evolving and may still mark some emails as spam. However, whitelisting an email address can significantly increase the chances of receiving those important emails.

Understanding Whitelisting

Whitelisting is a way of allowing emails from certain senders to get through spam filters and reach your mailbox directly. This is useful if you want to make sure that emails from individuals you know and trust always reach you, even if they contain potentially spam-like information.

When you whitelist an email address, you are telling your email provider that you trust that sender and want to receive their emails. This is really important for businesses that rely on email for communication with clients or customers, as important emails can sometimes be miss marked as spam and never reach their intended recipient.

Just remember, whitelisting doesn’t stop spam. Even if you have whitelisted some senders, hackers and scammers can still send emails through. It can, however, be a good approach to prevent unintentional rejection of those important client emails.

You can whitelist an email address in Google by adding the sender’s email address to your Contacts list or by creating a filter that allows their emails to bypass the spam filter. By doing so, you can relax knowing that emails from that source always arrive in your mailbox, even if they include potentially spam-like content.

Accessing Your Google Account Settings

To whitelist an email address in Google, you need to access your Google account settings. Here’s how:

  1. Open your web browser and go to Google.
  2. Click on the “Sign in” button located at the top-right corner of the page.
  3. Enter your Google account email address and password, then click on the “Sign in” button.

Once you are signed in, click on the “Google apps” button located at the top-right corner of the page.

From the drop-down menu, click on the “Gmail” icon.

You are now in your Gmail account inbox and ready to start whitelisting emails.

Creating a New Contact

The fastest way to whitelist an email address in Gmail is by simply adding the sender to your contact list. 

To do this, go to your inbox and hover over an email from the person whose email address you wish to add to your whitelist. When a person + icon appears in the top-right corner of the new tab, click and select “Add [sender] to Contacts.” This will add the sender’s email address to your contacts list and allow you to receive emails from them.

Navigating to the Filters and Blocked Addresses Tab

The other way to prevent emails from being sent to spam is to go to the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab in your Gmail settings following these quick steps:

  1. In your Gmail inbox, click on the gear icon located at the top-right corner of the page.
  2. From the drop-down menu, click on “Settings” and select “See All Settings”.
  3. Click on the “Filters and Blocked Addresses” tab, which is located near the top of the page.

You will now see your Gmail account settings page, where you can whitelist an email address through filters.

Overall, navigating to the Filters and Blocked Addresses tab in Google is a straightforward process that can help users better manage their email. Now, you are ready to create a new filter.

Creating a New Filter

Instead of just creating a new contact, you can create a new filter for keeping essential emails. By following these simple steps, users can ensure that important messages are never missed or marked as spam.

Entering the Desired Email Address

Now that you are in the “Filters and Blocked Addresses” tab, click on the “Create a new filter” tab.

In the “From” field, enter the email address that you want to whitelist. If you want to whitelist multiple email addresses, separate them with a comma, and continue to add to your list.

Selecting the Right Criteria

Once you have entered the desired email address, you can select the guidelines for the filter. You can choose to apply the filter to all incoming emails, or you can specify certain criteria such as keywords, subject lines, or attachment types.

For example, if you only want to whitelist emails from a certain sender with a specific subject line, you can enter those standards in the appropriate fields. You can also choose what action to take with the emails that meet the filter criteria, such as marking them as important or archiving them.

By creating a new filter with the desired email address and specifications, you can ensure that any important emails will not be sent to spam.

Choosing the Never Send to Spam Option

Now that you’ve created a new filter with the email address and criteria, you can also simply check the box “Never send it to Spam” without needing to select any other parameters.

Saving the Filter

After selecting the “Never send it to Spam ” option, or other criteria, click on the “Create filter” button to save the filter. This will ensure that all future emails from the whitelisted email address are delivered to the inbox.

We hope you have a better understanding of how whitelisting an email address in Google is an easy process that can help increase the likelihood that important emails from important clients are not missed. 

Again, we want to point out that whitelisting an email address does not guarantee that all emails from that address will be delivered to the inbox, but it is a great step to take.

Need more help?

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Technical Series: Why Can’t I Send Email to Hotmail (and Other Email Providers)?!

For those of us actively running and maintaining email servers, we understand all too well that clients sending emails to Hotmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, Verizon.net and other email service providers can sometimes end with the dreaded 550 error message bounceback.  What seems to be a very trivial matter can quickly devolve into a limitless black hole of time spent trying to determine why certain email accounts cannot be delivered to from your mail server.  As with most things in life, it is often a combination of the following factors:

  • Open Relay. This is far and away the most egregious of mail server sins.  If not properly configured, a mail server can be allowed to permit spammers to route email through the server.  There are many ways to check for an open relay on a mail server, including free online utilities such as mxtoolbox.com.
  • Lack of Reputation for Mail Server. Several things can affect the reputation of an email server, including IP reputation, spam complaint rate, email bounce-back rate and blacklist status.  In short, having a good reputation for a mail server requires a good associated IP address reputation, a low spam complaint rate, a low email bounce-back rate and not being listed on any spam blacklists.  There are more factors involved with the determination of mail server reputation, but these are some of the more common ones discussed.
  • No Reverse DNS Record (PTR). Also known as “pointer records”, PTRs are typically used for reverse DNS.  In other words, a PTR is used to map an IP address to a hostname.  Many email servers look for a PTR when an email is attempted to be delivered.  If a PTR is not present from the sending email server, oftentimes the email will not be allowed to be delivered.  This creates a bounce-back email, which can negatively affect the sending email server’s reputation.
  • No SPF Record. An SPF record identifies which mail servers are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain.  Similarly to the presence of a PTR, the lack of an SPF record can negatively affect the sending email server’s reputation due to the creation of a bounce-back email.
  • Blacklisted IP Address. Blacklists are a means of compiling IP addresses for mail servers that have been reported to be sending spam.  There are many such lists, including Spamhaus, Spamcop and Barracuda Reputation Block List just to name a few.  Mail servers check the origin of email messages against blacklists and will typically reject email coming from listed offenders.  Multiple free, online tools can be used for investigating your mail server blacklist status (such as mxtoolbox.com) for checking your mail server’s spam blacklist status.
  • SMTP TLS. SMTP TLS (Transport Layer Security) is a method used where two email servers that are transmitting a message between them automatically negotiate an encrypted channel so that the emails transmitted are secure.  Most mail servers have the ability to ONLY accept emails from mail servers that support TLS SMTP.
  • Configure DKIM for Local Domains. DKIM provides a means for verifying the integrity of a message. A mail server enabled with DKIM adds a signature to email messages sent from it that can be used to verify the contents of said email by the receiving mail server.  Again, some mail servers are configured to only accept email messages from mail servers enabled with DKIM.

There are many factors that can prevent an email message from being delivered.  Fortunately, most mail servers send bounce-back emails when an email message is not delivered that include error messages and failure codes.  These codes are a good place to start when your email messages are not getting to their desired destination.  If the error codes are not providing much insight into the overlying issue, try contacting the email provider you are trying to send email to (e.g. Google for Gmail, Microsoft for Outlook.com and Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc.).  While the larger email providers are not forthcoming with what exact blacklists they use or other metrics used to determine if an email is delivered, they often have means of remediation where you can get your email server removed from their “do not accept” lists.

With a few internet search engine queries, a chat or email with the email provider you are trying to send emails to, and a little luck, your email messages will be on their way!

 

References:

https://www.mailenable.com/kb/content/article.asp?ID=ME020003

http://forum.mailenable.com/viewtopic.php?t=17208

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/oemail-osend/unable-to-send-emails-to-microsoft-email-accounts/1c502639-120a-4d19-9dd2-2d6534ca4e55

Server rep: https://fulcrumtech.net/resources/improve-email-delivery-rate/

PTR: http://help.dnsmadeeasy.com/managed-dns/dns-record-types/ptr-record/

SPF: https://support.google.com/a/answer/33786?hl=en

Blacklist: http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/email/email-troubleshooting/why-do-mail-servers-get-blacklisted

https://sendgrid.com/blog/blacklisted-check-7-popular-blacklists-keep-reputation-intact/

SMTP TLS: https://luxsci.com/blog/how-to-tell-who-supports-tls-for-email-transmission.html

DKIM: http://www.mailenable.com/documentation/8.0/Enterprise/Domain_-_DKIM_(DomainKeys).html

 

Why Do I Need an Email Address With My Domain Name?

Have you ever noticed an email address on a business card or website like “greatlakes16@verizon.net” that just screams “unprofessional”?

Chances are that the answer is yes.

While the email address is not offensive, it does not convey a sense of professionalism (or branding), either.  All businesses today should have email addresses using their website domain name (e.g. jane.doe@mybusinessdomain.tld).  It is a relatively inexpensive bit of marketing you can do to lend your company’s online presence more credence.

What about individuals that are used to checking just their personal email account, and worry that creating a new email address using their domain name will disrupt their workday flow?

Most email services (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc) provide email forwarding to overcome this obstacle.  One can easily forward all email from their professional email address to another email address (e.g. their personal email address).  This prevents the need for checking a separate email address.

So how do you get a professional-looking email address?  It is a very simple process, and only requires two steps:

  1. You must have a domain name registered:  For example, if you have a website at mybusiness.tld, you most likely already have your domain name registered.  If you do not have a domain name, typical TLD’s (Top Level Domains such as .com, .net and .biz) can be registered though IFTS for $19.99 per year.
  2. You must subscribe to an email service: There are several email service providers that offer a number of useful features for business users, including extensive address book tools and spam protection.  Expect to pay at least $5 per user per month for an email service.  IFTS can facilitate setting up an email service to utilize your domain name.

Alternatively, most hosting providers offer a limited email solution free with a hosting plan that will make use of your domain name.  These email services tend to not be as full-featured as the paid email options from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!, and are less reliable due to being dependent on your hosting provider’s server availability.  In other words, when their server goes down, so does your email!

Which email service is right for you?  IFTS exclusively recommends using G Suite by Google Cloud email service (https://gsuite.google.com).  This is Google’s business email offering, and offers a very robust webmail experience, as well as included cloud storage and integration with their business productivity web applications.

IFTS can easily route your email to G Suite.  The cost is $5 per user per month, and you can have multiple aliases associated with each user.

References:

http://www.productivity501.com/setup-your-email-to-look-professional/262/

https://iwantmyname.com/blog/the-guide-to-getting-your-own-custom-email-address

https://clickwp.com/blog/professional-email-address/

https://problogger.com/how-to-set-up-an-email-account-that-uses-your-domain-name/