Google has recently announced a new set of guidelines for sending emails from/to Gmail accounts, which will come into effect from tomorrow, Feb 1, 2024.

They're enforcing stringent authentication requirements to improve security and minimize spam.

In this post, we'll brief about how it will affect users who send emails from Bigin and what they need to do.

If you're someone who send emails via Bigin and use an email address with a common domain like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @outlook.com, etc in the From field, this change impacts you from tomorrow, Feb 1, 2024. Please read this post till the end to know what you need to do to comply with Gmail's new guidelines.

Starting Feb 1, 2024, Google will quarantine emails sent from Gmail addresses like @gmail.com, @googlemail.com and also makes it mandatory to authenticate the domains from which emails are sent to Gmail addresses. To make sure this doesn't affect users sending emails via Bigin, we will automatically replace common domains like gmail.com, outlook.com, etc and custom domains that weren't authenticated in Bigin, with a secure domain @biginsender.com. For example : if you've signed up for Bigin using the email address <yourName>@gmail.com, and if you try to send an email from Bigin, we'll replace the From address with <yourName>@biginsender.com. This will be done for emails sent to individual contacts, Mass Emails, and emails sent through Workflows.

If you've added your Organization's email address in Bigin and have completed email authentication in Bigin for that domain(owned by your business), then you can continue to use that in the From address while sending emails from Bigin. It won't be impacted by this change, and we won't replace the From address as mentioned above.

Please note that if you have configured your mailbox in Bigin via IMAP, then we won't replace the From address as mentioned above(except for Mass Emails), as your emails will be sent through your mailbox and not Bigin.

In addition to the above step, Bigin will prevent users from adding their Organization's email address if they belong to common domains like @gmail.com, @googlemail.com @yahoo.com, @outlook.com, etc. We would suggest you to add your Organization's email address only if they belong to a custom domain that belongs to your business.

1. Please make sure you complete Email Authentication in Bigin for all the domains you use to send emails via Bigin, including Organization email addresses. Email Authentication in Bigin includes SPF and DKIM protocols which adds authenticity to your domain and ensures emails sent from your domain via Bigin are genuine and are not tampered with.

2. Google mandates the senders to maintain a low spam rate of below 0.3% to make sure that your emails don't get flagged by their servers.

3. If you send more than 5000 emails per day to Gmail addresses, then you are required to conform with DMARC protocol for your domain in addition to SPF and DKIM authentication.

Please reach out to support@bigin.com if you need any assistance regarding this.