Allowed Senders

How do you add an allowed sender?

1. 1Open Contacts and choose the Manual tab.
2. 2Under Allowed Senders, type a domain such as mattsenter.com or an address such as hotstuff@mattsenter.com. A leading @ is ignored.
3. 3Click Allow. The entry applies to the next message that arrives.

You can also add a sender straight from a message. Open its entry in the Activity tab and choose to add the sender's address or domain to your allowlist. This is the quickest fix when Premail filters something you wanted.

Entries can be edited or removed from the same list at any time. Adding a sender only affects new mail: it does not move messages Premail already filed. To find those, open the activity log, which shows what happened to each message and where it went.

How does allowlist specificity work?

Entries can be a domain (e.g. mattsenter.com) or a specific address (e.g. hotstuff@mattsenter.com). A domain entry covers every sender from that domain, including subdomains, so mattsenter.com also covers mail.mattsenter.com. An address entry covers only that exact address.

The allowlist is checked before domain-level blocks, so if a domain appears on both lists the allowlist wins. The one exception: if a specific address is explicitly blocked by address (not just by domain), that block overrides any allowlist entry for that sender. An allowed address, likewise, gets through even when its domain is blocked. See Blocked Senders for the full order.

When two entries interact, the lists say so: an entry shows a small badge such as an overrides note or a conflict warning, naming the other entry and which one wins.

Do rules apply to allowlisted senders?

Once a sender is on your allowlist, Premail will not touch their messages. Custom rules, built-in category rules, auto-unsubscribe, and automatic replies are all skipped. The message is never sent to the AI either, so an allowed sender costs nothing in AI usage. The only global setting that can still affect an allowlisted message is Mark as read no matter what. If that is enabled, the message is still marked as read on delivery.

If you want Premail to take action on a sender, do not put them on the allowlist. Use a custom rule instead.

Should I allow a whole domain like gmail.com?

Almost never. Everyone on a shared provider uses the same domain, so allowing gmail.com, icloud.com, or outlook.com would let every stranger on that provider skip your rules, including cold outreach and spam. For people on those providers, allow their exact address instead.

Is the allowlist the same as an allowed contact?

They have the same effect. If you sync your address book, any synchronized contact set to Allowed also bypasses every rule. The Manual list wins if the two disagree. See Contacts and Address Book.