If you are encountering deliverability issues to recipients of a specific organization or private email domain, a possible solution is asking them to allowlist govDelivery’s sending IP addresses. In addition to solving deliverability issues, allowlisting IPs can also help prevent inflated open or click rates caused by tools such as automatic link checkers.
Private email domains tend to have more aggressive spam filters than free webmail providers such as Gmail. As a result, emails sent to these domains can be more prone to delivery issues or being scanned by automatic tools. This can also be true if you are sending communications to a large list of recipients internal to your organization.
This article explains what allowlisting is, and when and how to request it.
Click here for the list of
govDelivery Sending IP's. (Please note that you must be logged in to the Support Portal to view this list.)
What is allowlisting?
Allowlisting (or "whitelisting" depending on the provider) creates a list of trusted IP addresses or domains that have permission to deliver emails to a specific email address, domain, or enterprise. The specific process for allowlisting varies by organization and email clients. For example, in some cases an organization may be able to configure an allow list of delivery IP addresses through an email client, while others may need to configure an allow list to enable traffic through a domain firewall.
Allowlisting is the opposite of denylisting (also known as "blacklisting"), which you may be more familiar with. Denylisting identifies specific domains or IPs as harmful and communications from those sources are filtered out of recipients' inboxes or blocked completely.
For more information on how to ensure your communications are delivered successfully, see our article on
Deliverability.
When to allowlist
If sending to an internal audience, allowlisting govDelivery sending IPs within your own organization is always recommended.
For recipients outside of your organization, review these questions to determine whether allowlisting might help with deliverability or inflated open and click rate issues:
- Do all people with addresses at a certain private email domain, like @example.gov or @example.org, encounter issues receiving messages from your govDelivery account?
- Did affected recipients verify the message was not delivered to their spam or junk folders?
- Has enough time passed for all messages to have been delivered to the recipients?
- Do govDelivery reports show a click on the same link(s) for all or nearly all recipients from a certain domain?
If you answered yes to these questions, we recommend asking the recipients to allowlist govDelivery IP addresses.
How to allowlist govDelivery IPs
Allowlisting IPs requires an IT professional at the affected domain to update the configuration of the email server or anti-spam tools so that emails from govDelivery’s sending IP addresses are not blocked or unnecessarily scanned.
To request that your contacts allowlist govDelivery IPs, follow these steps.
- Review the govDelivery IP Address List to obtain the most up-to-date list of sending IPs. (Please note that you must be logged in to the Support Portal to view this list.)
- Notify the affected contact or your internal IT professionals that a network firewall or spam filter at their domain could be blocking govDelivery Bulletins or causing inflated open or click rates.
- Provide the contact with the list of govDelivery sending IPs. The contact may also wish to know the email address(es) that your communications will be sent from.
- Request that the IT professional use the full IP list to allowlist all govDelivery sending IP addresses on their domain.
Additional information
- In addition to govDelivery IP addresses, it is also possible to allowlist domain addresses or specific emails - typically by adding them to your email client’s Safe Sender’s list.
- We sometimes update our delivery IP addresses. When we do, we'll notify you of the change so that action can be taken.
- Message content can still cause delivery issues even when an allow list is in place. If recipients have allowlisted govDelivery IPs and you are still encountering deliverability issues, we recommend checking your own content for anything that may be triggering the block.
Read more about email deliverability here:
