Gated stops unknown email senders from getting into your inbox unless they donate to nonprofits

Dealing with work-related emails can be stressful, but nothing compares to getting bombarded with tons of marketing emails from businesses you don’t even know. While some might end up in your spam folder, some still manage to sneak into your inbox. This results in your important email messages being drowned under a huge pile of non-essential messages. And if your work revolves around email, especially at work, this could be a problem. This is what Gated is trying to address.

Are unsolicited emails getting into your nerves? Hoping you can do something to prevent them besides the conventional tools offered by your email service provider? Want to make your inbox clean from unwanted messages? Gated can do that. As a matter of fact, this software can do more than that. This startup founded by Andy Mowat, VP of growth operations at CultureAmp, has a very particular objective: it stops unknown email senders from directly penetrating your Gmail inbox UNLESS they donate to a nonprofit you chose. Ha! This won’t just help you to have a more organized inbox, but it will also force senders to do charity work before they can reach their targets. Even better, Gated is free for everyone who feels overwhelmed with the number of unknown emails every day!

This, however, doesn’t mean that you will be all free from such emails. Gated will create a separate folder in your email account, which will serve as your secondary spam folder so you can still check them in case there is a need to. Meanwhile, those senders you’ve communicated with before will be included in the list that Gated would allow to send you messages in the future. According to Mowat, replying to an email sender that chose to donate will also put them in the list… though you can put them in a Gated folder or mute them anytime. 

New email senders would automatically be asked to donate a minimum of $2 per email (depending on the price you’d like to set), where 70% of it would go to the nonprofit and 30% to the Gated. Despite the latter percentage mentioned, however, the payment expected to be received by Gated would only be used to cover the payment fees involving the cost of the transactions, said Mowat. And given that not all email marketers would embrace the option for donations, it really isn’t a lucrative path for Gated. 

On the other side of the coin, if you are one of those email senders benefitting from sending bulk emails to everyone, you’ll be given another option by Gated in the future. Mowat said that the company is planning to develop a product for businesses that would allow them to send a certain number of emails per month for a particular price/plan. This, nonetheless, would probably still be far in the future as it would still depend on how widespread Gated will be for all email users. And given that Gated is only available in Gmail, it might take a little while. Moreover, Gated is just a new startup and is still in the process of establishing a name in the market. Yet, with the convenience and great function it can provide, we say the access for a promising future won’t be that restricted for Gated.