Gmail sender guidelines
Google's requirements for sending to personal Gmail accounts, in force since February 2024: one set for all senders and stricter rules for those sending 5,000 or more a day.
What it means
All senders must authenticate with SPF or DKIM, have valid forward and reverse DNS for sending IPs, use TLS, keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%, format messages to RFC 5322 and not impersonate Gmail From addresses.
Senders of more than 5,000 messages a day must also use both SPF and DKIM, publish DMARC (at least p=none), align the From domain with the SPF or DKIM domain, and give marketing and subscribed messages one-click unsubscribe plus a visible unsubscribe link. Google's FAQ recommends honouring unsubscribe requests within 48 hours and withholds delivery support from bulk senders that do not.
Google renamed them from bulk sender guidelines to email sender guidelines and says it began ramping up enforcement on non-compliant traffic in November 2025, including temporary and permanent rejections.
Related terms
On this site
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- Google: Email sender guidelinessupport.google.com
- Google: Email sender guidelines FAQsupport.google.com
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