The limitations of using a free domain

Google and Yahoo have announced new rules for bulk email senders effective February 2024, which affects senders using MailerLite. With these new rules, you will not be able to use a free email domain (such as Gmail) as your sender address.

Instead, it is required to use an email address that is connected to a domain that you own. It is not necessary to have a website attached to that domain, but you need to have a paid domain with an email address that matches that domain, as this will be ideal for sending. For example, if your domain is example.com, your email may be newsletter@example.com.

It is not currently an option to purchase or host a domain in Mailerlite. To connect a domain and matching email address for sending, they will first need to be set up with a hosting provider.

Some trustworthy providers are Godaddy, Cloudflare, and Bluehost.

We highly recommend using Google Workspace, which allows you to create an email address with your own domain.

Once you’ve got your own domain email address, take a look at our article How to verify and authenticate your domain to significantly improve your deliverability rate.

The chances of your email landing in the recipients’ spam or junk folder increase when you send it from a free email domain sender address. Sometimes, the email may not arrive at all. 

Free email providers, such as Google, Yahoo, or Outlook, often have policies set in place that are meant to prevent spammers and phishers. However, these policies can sometimes reject emails that are sent by honest email marketing professionals from a free domain address.

A DMARC policy, which stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, is mostly responsible for this.

If a domain has a DMARC policy set in place, it can tell servers how to act upon incoming mail from particular senders, depending on whether they contain the appropriate DKIM and SPF records.

Its main functions include:

• Preventing unauthenticated entities from sending mail on behalf of a domain 
  (also known as spoofing)

• Increasing visibility by allowing domain owners to see emails that were sent on behalf of their domain

• Creating clear standards that help keep the email ecosystem safe and trustworthy

Sometimes, free email domain providers, such as Google, Yahoo or Outlook, have policies set in place that instruct their receiving servers to reject all emails that fail DMARC checks. This means these emails will be marked as spam, junk, or may never be delivered at all. 

Using an email address connected to your domain will increase your chances of landing in your recipients’ main inboxes, and not their spam or junk folders.

If you don’t want to create an email address with your domain’s hosting provider, you could always create it with Google Workspace.

Technically yes, but it's not recommended. When creating a campaign, you will be asked to provide an email address that will be used as the sender address to send your campaigns.

The best option is to use an email address that is connected to a domain that you own. It is not necessary to have a website attached to that domain, but you need to have a paid domain with an email address that matches that domain, as this will be ideal for sending. For example, if your domain is example.com, your email may be newsletter@example.com.

It is not currently an option to purchase or host a domain in Mailerlite. To connect a domain and matching email address for sending, they will first need to be set up with a hosting provider. 

Some trustworthy providers are Godaddy, Cloudflare, and Bluehost. 

While almost any email address can be used, we highly recommend not to use domains from free email providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL, etc. This is because they do not provide great deliverability rates.

If using a free email domain, you will have to verify it via a confirmation email that will be sent out to this particular email address. 

We suggest that you use your own domain email address so that you can authenticate it yourself. This increases the chances of your emails landing in the recipients’ main inboxes rather than their spam or junk folders. 

We highly recommend using Google Workspace, which allows you to create an email address with your own domain.

Once you’ve got your own domain email address, take a look at our article How to verify and authenticate your domain to significantly improve your deliverability rate.

The chances of your email landing in the recipients’ spam or junk folder increase when you send it from a free email domain sender address. Sometimes, the email may not arrive at all. 

Free email providers, such as Google, Yahoo, or Outlook, often have policies set in place that are meant to prevent spammers and phishers. However, these policies can sometimes reject emails that are sent by honest email marketing professionals from a free domain address.

A DMARC policy, which stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, is mostly responsible for this.

If a domain has a DMARC policy set in place, it can tell servers how to act upon incoming mail from particular senders, depending on whether they contain the appropriate DKIM and SPF records.

Its main functions include:

• Preventing unauthenticated entities from sending mail on behalf of a domain
  (also known as spoofing)

• Increasing visibility by allowing domain owners to see emails that were sent on behalf of their domain

• Creating clear standards that help keep the email ecosystem safe and trustworthy

Sometimes, free email domain providers, such as Google, Yahoo or Outlook, have policies set in place that instruct their receiving servers to reject all emails that fail DMARC checks. This means these emails will be marked as spam, junk, or may never be delivered at all. 

Because of this, we strongly recommend that you purchase a domain (even if you don’t have a website under it) and send emails from an email address that’s connected to this domain. 

Using an email address connected to your domain will increase your chances of landing in your recipients’ main inboxes, and not their spam or junk folders.

If you don’t want to create an email address with your domain’s hosting provider, you could always create it with Google Workspace.