I’m working on a contact form for my website that uses Gmail to handle email delivery. The setup involves sending emails from an alias address to the same alias address.
Here’s what’s happening: when I send an email from my main Gmail address (like [email protected]) to itself, everything works perfectly and the email shows up in my inbox. But when I try sending from my alias (something like [email protected]) to the same alias address, the email never appears in the inbox.
I’ve been using Gmail aliases for this setup because I need the client to see the appropriate domain name when they receive copies of the form submissions.
I already tried using Gmail filters but ran into limitations. I can add labels and even skip the inbox, but there’s no filter option to force emails into the inbox.
Sending from my main Gmail address isn’t an option since clients get CC’d on these messages and need to see the alias domain.
Has anyone found a workaround for this issue? It seems like it should be straightforward but I haven’t found any solutions online.
yep, i noticed that too! emails sent from an alias just end up in sent. try setting up a forwarder, it worked for me to get around that issue. no more lost emails!
Gmail has a built-in feature that filters emails sent from an alias back to itself, causing them not to show up in the inbox. I encountered a similar problem with my alerts. One effective solution is to set up a dedicated Gmail account to receive those emails and then forward them to your primary account. This method bypasses Gmail’s detection of self-sent emails. Alternatively, you could configure the contact form to send emails from the alias to your main Gmail address, ensuring that the clients still see the alias as the sender while guaranteeing delivery.
Had this exact same issue with my business notifications. Gmail blocks emails when you send from an alias to itself - treats them as duplicates. Here’s what worked: add a plus sign modifier to the recipient address. Instead of [email protected], use [email protected]. Gmail delivers it to the same inbox but doesn’t flag it as a self-send. Set up a filter to auto-label these emails so you can track them easily. Your clients still see the clean alias branding, but you actually get the notifications.