Shopify Email Deliverability: Why Emails Land in Spam

Shopify email deliverability depends on your sender reputation: Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook and Apple watch opens, clicks, bounces, spam complaints and whether your sending domain is authenticated, and use that history to choose between the inbox and spam. If Shopify Messaging emails land in spam, check three things in this order: whether your own domain is authenticated, whether you’re sending to people who engage, and whether the email itself looks like spam.

The facts below come from Shopify’s Help Center pages on email deliverability, read on October 23, 2026, and setting up your sender email, read on October 31, 2026.

How Shopify sends your email

Shopify authenticates every marketing email. If you haven’t authenticated your own domain, Shopify sends from a fully authenticated shopifyemail.com subdomain and rewrites your sender address to something like store+123@shopifyemail.com, where the number is unique to your store. That meets the authentication rules Gmail and Yahoo set for bulk senders, so a store without its own domain set up can still deliver.

Authenticating your own domain is optional, and Shopify recommends it. Emails then come from your domain, which customers recognize, and Shopify’s setup page notes that Gmail and Yahoo require authentication and a DMARC record to send from a branded address.

Authenticate your domain

Set the sender address first: go to Settings > Notifications, enter it in the Sender email section and click Save. Then authenticate the domain from the same section.

With Cloudflare, GoDaddy or IONOS:

1. Click Email domain authentication in the Sender email section.
2. Click Authenticate automatically.
3. Approve the change in the window your domain provider opens, then return to Shopify.

If you close the provider’s window before returning, click Manual setup, then I updated DNS records.

With any other provider:

1. In the Sender email section, click authenticate your domain.
2. Copy every CNAME record shown into your domain manager. The number of records varies; they cover SPF and DKIM.
3. Allow up to 48 hours. If verification fails, compare your DNS entries with the records in the admin.

Shopify doesn’t add the DMARC record for a third-party domain. Add a TXT record named _dmarc with the value v=DMARC1; p=none;, and make sure the domain has only one DMARC record. If one already exists, for example from your email host, update it instead of adding another.

To add the CNAME records, the store must be on an active paid plan; development stores and the Pause and Build plan can’t. And a forwarding address can only be the sender if the domain is a Shopify-managed custom domain.

Safe send limits and warm-up

Shopify limits how many subscribers you can email in a day or a week, counted by emails delivered, and raises the limit automatically as your reputation improves. Delivery can be paused when engagement is low or many subscribers mark emails as spam, and emails may go out in batches to avoid spam filters.

When you approach the limit, a banner on the campaign review page shows what’s left. You can then schedule the email for later, or split the list into segments, send to one and duplicate the campaign for the next. Once the limit is used up, the next send waits for the next day or week.

A new domain or address, or a return after a long break, needs warming up because providers have no recent history for it. Shopify’s advice: start with your most engaged contacts, such as recent buyers or subscribers who opened or clicked in the last 30 days, raise the volume gradually, and keep a regular schedule. We’d build that first segment before authenticating the domain, so the first branded send goes to it.

Content that trips filters

Shopify lists what to avoid: misleading subject lines, text in all capitals, excessive punctuation, and a single large image with little text. Send only to subscribers who opted in, and use segments to reach those who engage; Shopify’s example segment keeps subscribers added in the last 6 months, or who ordered or clicked an email before that. The design side, with length and image limits, is in our email design checklist.

Watch the numbers

Gmail and Yahoo have enforced a complaint rate below 0.3% since February 1, 2024, and Shopify advises staying below 0.1%. Hard bounces, from addresses that don’t exist or servers that refuse delivery permanently, should leave your list: build a segment of bounced addresses and remove them. Check imported lists with a verification tool before importing.

Google Postmaster Tools reports spam rates for mail to Gmail, but only for an authenticated domain sending at least 5,000 messages a day to Gmail addresses, so a smaller store relies on Shopify’s own reports. Where to find delivery, bounce and spam rates there is in Shopify email metrics, one of our email and popups guides.

FAQ

Why do my Shopify emails go to spam? Mailbox providers decide from your sender reputation: authentication, opens, clicks, bounces and spam complaints. Authenticate your domain with DMARC, send to subscribers who engage, and avoid misleading subject lines, all capitals and image-only emails.

What is shopifyemail.com? It’s the authenticated Shopify subdomain your emails are sent from when your own domain isn’t authenticated. Your sender address is rewritten to an address such as store+123@shopifyemail.com.

Do I need a DMARC record for Shopify emails? Gmail and Yahoo require domain authentication and a DMARC record to send from a branded address. Shopify adds it for Shopify-managed domains; for a third-party domain, add a TXT record named _dmarc yourself.

Why was my campaign sent in batches? Shopify sends in batches and applies safe send limits to protect your sender reputation. The limits rise automatically as engagement improves.