How to Delete Amazon, PayPal, and Online Store Promotional Emails

Steps

1. Separate promotional senders from receipt senders

   Note which addresses only ever send you marketing (deal alerts, sale notices) versus which send order confirmations, invoices, or payment receipts you may need later.

2. Sign in with Google

   Connect your Gmail account securely with Google OAuth. Clean Email stores counts of your emails, never their content.

3. Scan your mailbox

   In a few seconds, the scan counts how many emails in your mailbox are deletable (not protected) in total and how much storage they take up — there's no per-sender or per-category breakdown. Nothing is deleted at this stage.

4. Whitelist any sender whose receipts you must keep

   Add the exact address or entire @domain (for example paypal.com) to your protected list so its messages are never touched, even during a bulk cleanup.

5. Run the cleanup

   Everything except protected mail moves to Gmail Trash, recoverable for 30 days, or is permanently deleted if you explicitly opt into that instead.

6. Add Stop Ads to prevent new promotional mail

   The Stop Ads add-on (€1) auto-unsubscribes from newsletters Clean Email can reach and archives future mail from those senders, so the same promotional emails stop arriving.

Promotional emails vs. transactional receipts: what's the difference

Online stores and payment services send two very different kinds of mail from the same address or domain, and only one of them is safe to bulk-delete without a second thought.

How to bulk-delete promotional emails from Amazon, PayPal, and other stores

Gmail's own search operators can narrow a view to a specific sender's marketing mail. Typing from:amazon.com in the Gmail search bar shows all mail from that domain; combining it with category:promotions narrows further to messages Gmail already classified as marketing.

The catch: Gmail's manual selection only lets you check about 50 conversations per page, and searching by sender alone doesn't distinguish a promotional blast from an order confirmation sent by the same domain.

A bulk cleanup tool avoids that manual, page-by-page process. Clean Email's Big Cleanup (a one-time €1 charge) scans the whole mailbox in one pass and moves everything except protected mail to Gmail Trash in one click.

For ongoing cleanups instead of a single pass, the Clean Inbox subscription (€5/month) gives unlimited on-demand cleanups.

Whitelisting a sender whose receipts you need to keep

If a store or payment service sends both marketing and receipts from the same address, and you want to guarantee none of its mail is ever touched, add that sender to your protected (whitelist) list instead of relying on protection rules alone.

You can whitelist either an exact address (for example receipts@paypal.com) or an entire domain (for example the whole @paypal.com or @amazon.com). Once whitelisted, no message from that sender is deleted during a cleanup, promotional or not.

• Use an exact address when only one specific address at a domain sends the receipts you need.
• Use a whole @domain when a store sends both marketing and receipts from multiple addresses under the same domain and you want every message from it protected.
• Whitelisting is separate from the automatic protections below — it's for cases where you want a sender fully exempt from cleanup, regardless of what any individual message contains.

What's always protected automatically, even in a bulk cleanup

Beyond whitelisting, several categories of mail are never deleted, which covers most receipts even from senders you haven't whitelisted:

• Starred messages
• Messages marked important
• Messages carrying any user-created Gmail label
• Messages that are part of a two-way conversation (a thread you replied to, or that replied to you) — relevant if you ever emailed a store's support about an order
• Any message with an attachment of any kind, including a PDF invoice or receipt
• Senders on your whitelist, by exact address or entire @domain

FAQ

How do I delete Amazon promotional emails without losing my order receipts?

Whitelist the address or domain that sends your Amazon order confirmations and invoices so it's never touched, then run a bulk cleanup on the rest of your mailbox. Messages with an attachment (many receipts have one), starred or labeled mail, and two-way conversations are also protected automatically, even during a bulk cleanup.

Can I bulk-delete PayPal marketing emails in Gmail?

Yes. PayPal's promotional emails (offers, cashback pitches, partner deals) are ordinary marketing mail and safe to bulk-delete. A bulk cleanup tool like Clean Email's Big Cleanup (a one-time €1 charge) scans your mailbox and moves everything except protected mail to Gmail Trash, recoverable for 30 days, while your actual payment receipts stay protected if they're labeled, starred, carry an attachment, or come from a whitelisted address.

What's the difference between a promotional email and a transactional receipt?

A promotional email is marketing content — deal alerts, sale banners, cart reminders, loyalty pitches — sent to encourage a purchase. A transactional receipt is a record of something that already happened: an order confirmation, shipping notice, invoice, or payment confirmation. Only the promotional kind is safe to bulk-delete without checking it first.

How do I whitelist a sender so their receipts are never deleted?

Add the sender's exact email address, or their entire @domain, to your protected (whitelist) list before running a cleanup. Once whitelisted, none of that sender's mail — promotional or transactional — is ever deleted, in any cleanup run.

Will deleting Amazon or PayPal promotional emails also delete my invoices or order history?

No, as long as protections hold. Any message with an attachment (many invoices and receipts have one), any message you starred or labeled, any two-way conversation, and any sender on your whitelist are never deleted, even in a bulk cleanup. By default, deleted mail also moves to Gmail Trash rather than being erased outright, so it stays recoverable for 30 days unless you explicitly opt into permanent deletion.