Many users set up their Gravatar expecting it to be shown when sending emails from their email address. This is not always the case, this page explains why.
What is Gravatar?
Gravatar is a service that provides a Globally Recognized Avatar for any given email address. You can read more on how this integration works under the hood here.
Why Is your Email Avatar not showing?
⚠️ Important: The visibility of your Gravatar when sending emails depends entirely on the email client used by the recipient.
This can happen for multiple reasons. But most likely the reason is that the email client your readers are using does not support Gravatar.
Truth be told, there aren’t many email clients (meaning the app or platform your users use to read their emails) that support Gravatar. Most popular email services (like Gmail, Outlook or Apple Mail) don’t. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do.
If you have confirmed your reader’s email client support, then there might be some setting (or addon) that your readers will need to tweak.
Lastly, review that the email address you are using as sender is the one you setup in Gravatar. Remember you can add multiple emails to your account!
Why is it so confusing?
Some email providers (or marketing solutions) mention Gravatar as a way to setup your avatar in their system. This can make you think that, once you send an email from there, your avatar will appear. But that’s not the case.
They are mentioning Gravatar so you can setup your avatar in their management system. So you see it when you access your account in their platform.
Other options
Maybe you have seen some companies showing their avatar when sending emails. You are right. They are using BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification), which is a standard that Google designed a few years ago.
This requires some complex setup as you can see in the official implementation guide. Including: trademarking your logos, setting up secure signing for all your emails and some changes in your domain’s DNS.
From Gravatar, we are keeping track of how BIMI evolves.
Gravatar Support 