Gmail Email Sender Guidelines

If you send mail to personal Gmail accounts, meaning addresses ending in @gmail.com or @googlemail.com, Google's Email Sender Guidelines set out what you must do for that mail to be accepted and delivered. The requirements have been enforced since February 1, 2024, and have become stricter over time (see Enforcement timeline).

Scope:

• The guidelines and Google's enforcement apply only to mail sent to personal Gmail accounts. Messages sent to Google Workspace accounts are not covered. However, all senders, including Google Workspace users, must meet the guidelines when they send to personal Gmail accounts.
• Google Workspace senders who send large volumes are also subject to the Gmail Spam and abuse policy.

Who counts as a bulk sender

"A bulk sender is any email sender that sends close to 5,000 messages or more to personal Gmail accounts within a 24-hour period."

How this works:

• Volume is counted for each primary (organizational) domain, including its subdomains. Google's example: 2,500 messages a day from solarmora.com plus 2,500 a day from promotions.solarmora.com make a bulk sender, because all 5,000 came from the primary domain solarmora.com.
• Bulk sender status is permanent: "Bulk sender status doesn't have an expiration date." Falling below 5,000 a day later does not remove the status.
• Note the words "close to 5,000". Do not treat 4,999 as safe.

Requirements for ALL senders (any volume)

Additional requirements for bulk senders (≈5,000+/day)

Everything above, plus:

Details of one-click unsubscribe, from Google's FAQ:

• It is required only for marketing and promotional messages. Transactional messages are excluded.
• A mailto: List-Unsubscribe on its own does not meet the requirement, because RFC 8058 requires the HTTPS POST mechanism.
• Other unsubscribe links in the message body do not have to be one-click.
• One-click unsubscribe may remove the recipient from that specific mailing list only, not necessarily from all mail from the sender.

Enforcement timeline

Mitigation eligibility

Google's escalation (mitigation) form for bulk senders only helps senders who already comply:

• A sender is ineligible while its user-reported spam rate is > 0.3%.
• Eligibility returns once the spam rate stays below 0.3% for 7 consecutive days.
• Full authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and a working one-click unsubscribe are prerequisites.
• The spam rate and other Postmaster Tools data are calculated and updated daily.

Non-compliance error codes

Gmail reports failures to meet the guidelines with 4.7.x temporary errors (rate limiting), which escalate to 5.7.x permanent rejections. All Gmail SMTP errors carry the identifier gsmtp (and gcdp when a Workspace administrator's custom rule caused them).

The full list of errors, including format and reputation errors, is in Gmail troubleshooting.

To recover from rate limiting (SMTP 4.7.28 quota errors): wait at least 10 minutes, then resume with a single connection. If that works, add connections one at a time. If the single connection still fails, wait another 10 minutes.

Sending-practice recommendations (non-binding but weighted)

• Send from consistent IP addresses. Use different IP addresses for different types of message (for example, notifications and promotions), and consistent From: addresses for each category. See Advanced IP segmentation.
• Increase volume gradually, at steady rates, and avoid bursts. See IP warm-up.
• On shared IP addresses, every sender's activity affects the shared reputation. Monitor the IP address against blocklists and in Postmaster Tools.
• Do not buy email lists, send unsolicited mail, or use opt-in forms with pre-checked boxes (regional law may prohibit them).
• Monitor affiliates and drop any that send spam: "If your brand is associated with marketing spam, other messages sent by you might be marked as spam."

Display name rules

A sender's display name must identify only that sender, and reflect a consistent, clear and accurate identity. The display name must not contain subject-line text or message content ("URGENT REQUEST", "TIME IS RUNNING OUT"), deceptive emoji, the recipient's own name, or anything that imitates a threaded conversation (deception in the style of "Re:").

Compliance verification

Use Google Postmaster Tools, in particular the Compliance status dashboard, to check each requirement, and the Spam Rate dashboard to track the thresholds of 0.10% and 0.30%. After a fix, changes in compliance status can take up to 7 days to appear.

Related articles

• DMARC, on SPF, DKIM, DMARC and alignment
• Yahoo sender requirements
• Microsoft sender requirements
• Google Postmaster Tools