Email Gatekeeper: Control Who Reaches Your Inbox

The Case for an Email Gatekeeper

Think about who can currently reach your inbox:

• Anyone who guesses or finds your email address
• Anyone who buys a list with your information
• Anyone who scrapes your details from a website, social profile, or data breach
• Anyone who gets your email from someone else

That's everyone. Literally billions of people have potential access to one of your primary communication channels.

Now think about what they can do with that access:

• Demand your attention
• Add to your todo list
• Create stress and obligation
• Waste your time

All without your permission. All for free.

This is absurd. Imagine if anyone could walk into your office, interrupt your work, and pitch you on whatever they wanted. You'd hire security. You'd install locks.

Your inbox deserves the same protection.

What an Email Gatekeeper Does

An effective email gatekeeper:

Screens incoming messages — Separating people you want to hear from versus random outreach

Creates friction for strangers — Making it slightly harder to reach you filters out low-effort attempts

Protects your time — Ensuring the messages that do reach you are worth reading

Maintains relationships — Letting important contacts through without obstacles

Traditional solutions try to accomplish this with filters, rules, and spam detection. They work partially. But they're reactive—dealing with messages after they've been sent.

The Proactive Gatekeeper: Make Them Pay

What if your gatekeeper charged admission?

Not for everyone. Your contacts, colleagues, and anyone you've corresponded with gets in free. But strangers? Cold outreach from people who want your attention? They invest in reaching you.

This isn't about making money (though you will). It's about creating a forcing function that separates signal from noise before it reaches your inbox.

A recruiter who pays $10 to pitch you a job has:

• Verified you're actually a fit for the role
• Invested enough to send a personalized message
• Demonstrated the opportunity is real

A spammer who would need to pay $10 per recipient has:

• Moved on to easier targets
• Never entered your inbox in the first place

The gatekeeper doesn't just filter. It prevents unwanted messages from existing.

Your Inbox, Your Rules

You decide:

• Who bypasses the gatekeeper: Contacts, specific domains, certain senders
• The price of entry: $1 for minimal friction, $100 for serious inquiries only
• What happens to payers: Their messages land in your inbox like normal email

The control is entirely yours. The gatekeeper works for you.

inbux: Your Automated Email Gatekeeper

inbux acts as your email gatekeeper for Gmail. Connect your account, set your terms, and let strangers decide if reaching you is worth the price.

No software to manage. No assistant to pay. No manual screening required.

Just a simple rule: strangers pay, or they stay in spam.

Your inbox. Your attention. Your terms.

Learn more about how an email paywall works and the economics behind inbox protection.