Allowlist
A list of senders a receiving system trusts and exempts from some filtering. Large mailbox providers generally do not offer senders a way onto one.
What it means
Allowlists are run by receivers. An administrator can exempt trusted IP addresses from checks (Barracuda's gateway documentation describes exemptions from its reputation list), and SpamCop encourages users of its blocking list to keep an actively maintained allow list of wanted senders. RFC 5782 covers DNS-based whitelists alongside blacklists.
At the large consumer providers there is no allowlist to join. Apple says plainly that iCloud Mail does not offer one for bulk senders and tracks reputation instead. Spamhaus warns against consultants who promise to get senders whitelisted at ISPs.
What senders can influence is the recipient side: a recipient who adds your address to their contacts helps, and Google notes that messages from an address in the recipient's contacts are less likely to be marked as spam.
Related terms
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- Apple Support: Postmaster information for iCloud Mailsupport.apple.com
- SpamCop Blocking Listspamcop.net
- Barracuda Campus: Barracuda Reputation and email categorizationcampus.barracuda.com
- RFC 5782: DNS blacklists and whitelistsrfc-editor.org
- Spamhaus FAQ: Marketing emailspamhaus.org
- Google: Email sender guidelinessupport.google.com
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes