Features

Email deliverability

"My emails aren't arriving" is usually one of three different problems, and they have different fixes:

1. Not delivered at all. The address bounced. Waitlister suppresses these automatically.
2. Delivered to the spam folder. An authentication, content, or list-quality problem. You can fix this.
3. Delivered to Gmail's Promotions tab. This is neither spam nor a delivery failure. Gmail categorizes marketing-shaped email as promotional; that's normal. You can nudge it, but some of it is outside any sender's control.

Check which one you actually have before changing anything: open the subscriber in your dashboard and look at their email history. "Bounced" is problem 1. Delivered but the recipient found it in spam is problem 2. Delivered and it's sitting in Promotions is problem 3.

The Promotions tab is not spam

Gmail sorts mail into tabs (Primary, Promotions, Updates) based on what the email looks like, not on your sender reputation. A welcome email with a designed layout, images, buttons, and an unsubscribe link looks promotional, because it is. Google's own documentation describes Promotions as a normal category, and recipients can move any email to Primary.

What nudges emails toward Primary:

• Write like a person. A short, mostly-text email from "Ada at YourProduct" beats a designed template from "YourProduct Team" for tab placement. Cut images and buttons down to what the email actually needs.
• Ask for a reply. End your welcome email with a real question ("what made you sign up?"). A reply is the strongest signal Gmail gets that your mail belongs in Primary, and the answers are useful market research.
• Ask subscribers to move you. One line in your thank-you page or welcome email ("find us in Promotions? Drag the email to Primary") trains Gmail per-recipient.
• Use a real reply-to address you actually read, not a no-reply.

And a calibration point: for a waitlist, Promotions placement matters less than it feels like it does. Subscribers who just signed up are actively looking for your confirmation email. Watch your open rates before treating the tab as a crisis.

Landing in actual spam

Work through these in order:

1. Authenticate with your own domain

By default your emails send from Waitlister's shared domain, which works out of the box and is fine for getting started. On the Growth plan and above you can send from your own domain (hello@yourdomain.com): Waitlister generates the authentication records (DKIM and SPF) for you; you add them to your DNS and verify. Your emails then build your reputation, independent of anyone else's sending. See Custom email domain.

2. Keep the list clean

• Leave email validation on (it's on by default). It catches undeliverable and disposable addresses at signup, before they can hurt you.
• Turn on double opt-in if your signups come from paid traffic or anywhere bots find forms. Confirmed addresses bounce less and complain less.
• Never import a purchased or scraped list. Mailbox providers detect this quickly, and the complaint rate will follow you.

3. Send like a human, not a cannon

• Warm up. For your first broadcasts, send to a segment first (use the position range or a tag when composing) and work up to the full list over a few sends.
• Be consistent. A monthly update beats six months of silence followed by a launch blast to 10,000 cold addresses. Silence makes your list forget you; forgotten senders get marked as spam.
• Skip the spam patterns: link shorteners, ALL-CAPS subjects, "FREE!!!", misleading subject lines. Say what the email is.

4. Watch complaints, not just opens

A spam complaint ("mark as spam") is the metric mailbox providers act on. Gmail and Yahoo cut off bulk senders whose complaint rate hits 0.3%, and you want to stay far below that line, well under one complaint per thousand emails. The best protection is only emailing people who clearly asked, and making unsubscribing a single click (it always is with Waitlister; see below).

5. Test it yourself

Before a big send, broadcast to yourself first: add your own Gmail and Outlook addresses to the list and see exactly where the email lands. Ten minutes of testing beats a week of guessing.

What Waitlister handles automatically

You don't need to configure any of this:

• One-click unsubscribe headers (RFC 8058) on every welcome email and broadcast. Gmail and Yahoo require these for bulk senders; Waitlister handles the whole flow for you and honors unsubscribes immediately.
• Bounce suppression. Addresses that hard-bounce are marked undeliverable and never emailed again.
• Complaint suppression. If someone marks your email as spam, we treat it as an unsubscribe: they won't be emailed again, and your complaint rate stays protected.
• Plain-text versions of every email are sent alongside the HTML, a long-standing spam-filter and accessibility best practice.
• A visible unsubscribe link in every broadcast and welcome email.
• Deliverability statuses on every subscriber. Broadcasts automatically skip addresses marked undeliverable, disposable, or unsubscribed.

FAQ

I set up a custom email domain and my emails still go to Promotions. Why?

Because authentication and tab placement are different systems. Your custom domain fixes who the email is from (reputation, spam-folder risk); the Promotions tab is about what the email looks like. A designed, image-rich email will sit in Promotions on a perfectly authenticated domain. Use the content levers above: plainer template, personal from-name, ask for a reply.

What's a good open rate for waitlist emails?

Welcome emails land well above your normal rates, because the recipient just asked for them and is often watching their inbox for the confirmation. Broadcasts to an older list vary widely. The useful signal is your own trend: if broadcast opens are sinking send-over-send, the list is going stale. Send more consistently, or re-engage before the big launch email.

How do I warm up before a launch announcement?

Send your launch email to positions 1–500 first (position range in the broadcast composer), wait a few hours, then send to the rest. Early positions are your most invested subscribers; their opens and clicks warm the path for the full send.

Does Waitlister limit how many emails I can send?

Email sending starts on the Launch plan, and each plan that includes it has a monthly allowance (see pricing). The caps also protect the shared sending domain: one sender blasting doesn't degrade delivery for everyone else.