A client says they emailed you days ago, but you never got it. Or you're waiting for a quote that supposedly went out last week. Before you blame the internet, there are quite a few things you can check — and most of them are in your own hands.
First Things First: Check Your Spam Folder
It sounds obvious, but it's the most common answer. Emails that look even slightly suspicious to your email provider get quietly moved to your spam or junk folder — and you might never know they arrived.
Make it a habit to glance at your spam folder every few days, especially if you're expecting something important. In Outlook, it's called the "Junk Email" folder. In Gmail, look for the "Spam" label in the left sidebar.
If you find a legitimate email sitting in spam, mark it as "Not Junk" or "Not Spam". This trains the filter to recognise that sender as safe in the future, so their next email should land in your inbox.
Most email providers automatically delete spam after 30 days. If you only check your spam folder once in a while, you might miss emails that were caught and then cleaned up before you ever saw them.
What Happens on the Server Before You Even See It
Before an email reaches your inbox — or your spam folder — it goes through a spam filter on the mail server itself. If you're hosted with a provider like Xneelo, they run their own spam filtering layer that scans every incoming email before it reaches you.
This is generally a good thing. It catches a huge amount of junk before it ever clutters your inbox. But sometimes it's a bit too aggressive, and legitimate emails get blocked at the server level — meaning they never even make it to your spam folder for you to rescue.
What your hosting provider can do
Most hosting providers, including Xneelo, let you adjust how strict the spam filtering is. If you're consistently missing emails from certain senders, it's worth asking your hosting provider (or us, if we manage your hosting) to:
- Check whether certain emails are being blocked at the server level
- Adjust the spam filter sensitivity — sometimes turning it down a notch is all it takes
- Whitelist a specific sender's domain so their emails always come through
Turning the filter down too much means more junk gets through. It's usually better to whitelist specific senders rather than lower the overall sensitivity.
Check Your Outlook & Email Client Settings
Even after an email passes the server-level filter, your email client (Outlook, Apple Mail, Gmail, etc.) has its own layer of spam filtering. These settings are in your hands, and a few tweaks can make a big difference.
In Microsoft Outlook
- Check your Junk Email settings — Go to Home → Junk → Junk Email Options. If it's set to "High" or "Safe Lists Only", Outlook is being very aggressive. Try setting it to "Low" or "No Automatic Filtering" if you trust your server-level filter to do the heavy lifting.
- Check your Blocked Senders list — In the same Junk Email Options window, check the "Blocked Senders" tab. You may have accidentally blocked someone without realising it.
- Check your inbox rules — Go to File → Manage Rules & Alerts. Old rules you forgot about might be moving emails to folders you never look at, or even deleting them automatically.
In Gmail
- Check the Spam label and the Promotions, Social, and Updates tabs — Gmail likes to sort emails into categories, and the one you're looking for might be sitting in a tab you never check.
- Search for the sender's email address using the search bar — this searches across all folders, including spam.
On your phone
If you're using the Outlook or Gmail app on your phone, the spam filtering settings from the desktop version carry across. But it's also worth checking that you don't have any "Focused Inbox" settings hiding emails in an "Other" tab that you're not looking at.
Whitelist the Senders That Matter
If there are people or companies you absolutely need to hear from — clients, suppliers, your accountant — the most reliable thing you can do is whitelist them. This tells your email system "always trust emails from this person", and it bypasses spam filters entirely.
Here's how to do it in the most common email clients:
Add them to your contacts
The simplest option. Most email providers automatically trust senders who are in your contact list.
Add them to your Safe Senders list
In Outlook: Junk → Junk Email Options → Safe Senders tab → Add. You can add an email address or an entire domain (e.g. @theircompany.co.za).
Create a Gmail filter
In Gmail: search for the sender, click the filter icon, then "Create filter" → check "Never send it to Spam".
Mark their email as "Not Spam"
If you find their email in spam, marking it as "Not Spam" or "Not Junk" teaches the filter to let their emails through going forward.
If you're in a corporate environment with a shared mail server, you can also ask your IT administrator to whitelist the sender's domain at the server level — this ensures everyone in your company receives their emails.
What We Can Do From Our Side
If we manage your hosting or email, there are a few things we can check and adjust on the server side:
- Check server-level spam logs — We can look at whether specific emails are being rejected or quarantined before they reach your inbox.
- Adjust spam filter sensitivity — If the filter is being too strict, we can dial it back or fine-tune it for your specific needs.
- Whitelist domains at the server level — If there's a sender whose emails keep getting caught, we can add their domain to the server's safe list so it bypasses filtering entirely.
- Check your domain's email authentication — There are behind-the-scenes settings on your domain that help email providers verify incoming mail is legitimate. If these aren't set up properly, it can cause issues. We can check and fix these for you.
That said, there's a limit to what any of us can control from the server side — which brings us to an important point.
The Reality: Email Is a Bit Unpredictable
Here's the honest truth that most people don't hear often enough: nobody has full control over email delivery. Not us, not your hosting provider, not even Google or Microsoft.
Email passes through multiple systems between the sender and your inbox — the sender's mail server, the internet, your hosting provider's spam filter, your email client's spam filter, and sometimes even additional security software on your company's network. Any one of these layers can decide an email looks suspicious and block it or move it to spam.
It's a system that was originally designed decades ago, and while it works well most of the time, it's far from perfect. Sometimes a perfectly legitimate email just doesn't make it through, and there's no single person or setting to blame.
The best thing you can do
The tips in this article — whitelisting contacts, checking your spam folder, adjusting your settings — will go a long way. But if you want the best possible control over your email and the most reliable spam filtering available, it's worth considering a move to Google Workspace.
For around $8 per user per month, Google Workspace gives you a professional email address on your own domain (e.g. you@yourcompany.co.za) powered by Gmail's industry-leading spam filter. Gmail's filtering is widely regarded as the best in the business — it catches the vast majority of spam while very rarely blocking legitimate emails. You also get full control over your filters, easy whitelisting, and none of the limitations that come with basic shared hosting email.
On top of the email improvements, you get Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Meet, and the entire suite of collaboration tools — all tied to your business domain.
We've written a full guide on Google Workspace — what it includes, what it costs, and how to get set up. Read our Google Workspace guide here.
Quick-Fix Checklist
If you're missing emails, work through this list:
Need Help With Your Email?
Whether you need help adjusting your spam filter settings, setting up Google Workspace, or investigating missing emails — we're here to help.