How to Block an Entire Email Domain in Gmail

Gmail's Block option — available from the three-dot menu on any message — blocks the individual sender address, not the company or the domain. If the same organisation sends from multiple addresses, or rotates addresses within a single domain, blocking one at a time is a maintenance job that scales in the sender's favour.

The right fix is a filter. Gmail lets you match every incoming message whose From address ends at a given domain and then act on all of them automatically: delete them, archive them, or route them to spam. There is no button in Gmail's standard interface that does this in one click. This guide covers the exact From-field syntax, whether the asterisk matters, why subdomains do not come along for free, the delete-vs-archive choice, and the separate route available to Google Workspace administrators who manage the domain itself.

The short answer#

Gmail does not have a domain-block feature. What it has is a filter system that achieves the same result. Open the filter creator by clicking the search bar and selecting Show search options. In the From field, enter *@domain.com — replacing domain.com with the actual sending domain. Choose an action, save the filter, and Gmail applies it to every future message whose sender address ends at that domain.

The critical detail: this does not match subdomains. A filter on *@example.com stops mail from [email protected] but leaves mail from news.example.com and b2.example.com untouched. Gmail treats each subdomain as a distinct sending domain. If the source you are trying to block routes mail through a subdomain, you need to block the subdomain directly — the parent domain entry alone will not catch it.

Before you start: confirm the actual sending domain#

Before creating the filter, read the From header on one of the messages you want to block. In Gmail, open the message, click the three-dot menu at the top right, and select Show original. Find the From line in the raw headers block. The domain after the @ symbol is what you need to enter.

This matters because sending domains are often different from the company's public website. Marketing platforms deliver mail on behalf of companies from addresses like em.companyname.com or b2.companyname.com — not from companyname.com itself. A filter on the company's main website domain will miss those. You need to filter the actual sending domain shown in the headers.

Also check whether the sending domain carries any mail you want. A domain filter catches every address at that domain — including ones you have not seen yet. If the same domain carries transactional mail such as order confirmations, password resets, or account notices, those will be caught too. If that is a risk, a filter scoped to specific subjects or sender patterns is safer than a full domain block.

Steps to block a domain in Gmail#

Follow these steps in personal Gmail and in Gmail through Google Workspace. The interface is the same for both.

1. 1

   Open the filter creator

   Click anywhere in the search bar at the top of Gmail. At the right end of the bar, a small icon appears — a set of sliders or a downward arrow depending on your Gmail version. Click it to open Show search options. A panel of filter fields appears below the search bar: From, To, Subject, Has the words, Doesn't have, Size, and Has attachment.

2. 2

   Enter the domain in the From field

   Type *@domain.com in the From field, replacing domain.com with the domain you want to block. Include the asterisk. The form *@example.com is the syntax documented by Gmail filter tooling as the standard way to match any address at that domain. The bare @domain.com without the asterisk is reported by some users to work, but it does not appear in Google's official search-operators documentation — so *@domain.com is the reliable form to use. Click the Search button at the bottom of the panel to preview which messages the filter would affect. If you see messages you want to keep, the domain may also carry mail you need. When satisfied, click Create filter at the bottom right of the preview.

3. 3

   Choose what Gmail does with matching messages

   The action screen offers several options. For blocking purposes, three matter: Delete it moves matching messages to Trash immediately — Gmail removes them permanently after 30 days; Skip the Inbox (Archive it) removes messages from your main inbox view but keeps them in All Mail where they remain searchable and recoverable; Mark as spam routes messages to your Spam folder and may help Gmail's classifiers recognise that sender pattern over time. Delete it is the cleanest choice if you are certain you will never need mail from that domain. Skip the Inbox is safer if any chance exists that a legitimate message might arrive from the same domain in future. You can combine actions — for example, Skip the Inbox plus Apply the label to keep domain-blocked mail organised and still retrievable.

4. 4

   Apply the filter to messages already in your inbox (optional)

   By default, the filter applies only to messages received after it is saved. To process existing messages from that domain, tick Apply filter to matching conversations before clicking the final Create filter button. For the Delete it action, this moves existing matching messages to Trash immediately. Click Create filter. The filter is now active and will run against every new message whose From address matches *@domain.com.

How the blocking methods compare#

If you have a personal Gmail account, the filter above is your only option. If your email runs through Google Workspace, an administrator can also block a domain at the organisation level using the admin console — a different mechanism that rejects mail at delivery rather than sorting it after it arrives.

What to do when the filter does not work#

If mail from the same domain keeps arriving after you created the filter, one of three things is happening.

The sender is using a subdomain. Open one of the messages that got through and select Show original from the three-dot menu. Read the From header. If it shows [email protected] rather than [email protected], your filter on *@example.com did not fail — it behaved exactly as designed. Subdomain addresses are outside its scope. Create a second filter with *@news.example.com, matching the exact subdomain shown in the raw headers.

The sending domain is different from what you blocked. Marketing platforms and email service providers send on behalf of companies from their own infrastructure. A filter on example.com has no effect on mail sent from em.example.com, hs1.example.com, or a shared delivery platform's domain. Check the raw From header — not the display name — and block the domain shown there.

The filter is applying only to new mail. If the messages that got through arrived before you created the filter, this is expected behaviour. Edit the filter under Settings, then See all settings, then Filters and Blocked Addresses. Click Edit on the filter, tick Apply filter to matching conversations, and save.

A faster way to handle persistent senders#

A Gmail filter covers the sending domain you identified. What it does not solve is the rotation problem: if the same source spreads across news.example.com, b2.example.com, and em.example.com, you need a separate filter entry for each one — and each new subdomain the sender spins up means another manual addition.

AI Emaily's cold-email filter works at the sender-behaviour and domain level rather than matching one address at a time. When a domain and its subdomain variants share the same sending pattern, the filter covers them together without you identifying each subdomain in advance and creating a new entry. We build AI Emaily. If your situation is a single domain sending from a stable address, the Gmail filter above is the right answer. If the same source keeps finding new entry points after each manual block, the continuous domain-and-behaviour filter is the mechanism worth using.