Frequently Asked Questions

ParentFlo receives copies of your school emails at a private forwarding address that belongs only to your account. When a school email arrives, ParentFlo scores it for urgency, extracts any important dates, and surfaces it in your inbox sorted by priority.

You do not connect your personal email account to ParentFlo. Instead, you set up forwarding so that emails from your child's school are automatically sent to your ParentFlo address. Your personal emails, banking notifications, and private messages never touch ParentFlo.

A forwarding address is a unique email address that belongs to your ParentFlo account. It looks like yourname-abc123@parentflo.app. When you set up forwarding in Gmail, Outlook, or another email app, copies of incoming emails are automatically sent to this address.

Think of it as a private mailbox that only receives what you decide to forward to it. You find your forwarding address in ParentFlo under Settings.

The setup process has four steps:

1. Copy your unique forwarding address from Settings in ParentFlo.
2. Open your email account (Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, etc.) on a desktop browser.
3. Go to forwarding or rules settings and add your ParentFlo address.
4. Confirm the verification step that your email provider sends.

Full instructions for each provider are in the sections below. Gmail is the easiest and takes about two minutes.

Gmail is the recommended provider. Full forwarding is free and built in.

1. Open Gmail in a desktop browser.
2. Click the gear icon in the top right, then select "See all settings."
3. Click the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab.
4. Click "Add a forwarding address."
5. Paste your ParentFlo forwarding address (found in Settings).
6. Click Next, then Proceed, then OK.
7. Gmail sends a verification email to your ParentFlo address. ParentFlo catches it automatically and shows you the verification code in the app under your setup progress.
8. Return to Gmail, find the verification code field, and enter the code.
9. Back in the Forwarding settings, select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to [your ParentFlo address]."
10. Click "Save Changes" at the very bottom of the page.

If your school district uses Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), the same steps apply unless your district administrator has disabled external forwarding for staff accounts.

1. Go to outlook.com and sign in.
2. Click the gear icon in the top right, then select "View all Outlook settings."
3. Go to Mail, then Forwarding.
4. Check "Enable forwarding."
5. Enter your ParentFlo forwarding address.
6. Check "Keep a copy of forwarded messages" so you still see emails in your own inbox.
7. Click Save.
8. Outlook sends a confirmation email. Click the link in that email to activate forwarding.

This works for Outlook.com, Hotmail, and Live Mail accounts. If you use Microsoft 365 through your employer, your IT administrator may need to allow external forwarding first.

iCloud Mail forwarding must be set up at icloud.com in a desktop browser. You cannot do this from the iPhone Mail app.

1. Go to icloud.com/mail in a desktop browser and sign in.
2. Click the gear icon in the bottom left, then select "Preferences."
3. Go to the "Rules" tab, then click "Add a Rule."
4. Set the condition to: If a message is received from [your school's email domain].
5. Set the action to: Forward to [your ParentFlo address].
6. Click Done.
7. iCloud will send a verification email to your ParentFlo address. Click the link in that email to activate the rule.

Yahoo Mail requires a paid Yahoo Mail Pro subscription (approximately $3.49 per month) to enable automatic forwarding. Free Yahoo Mail accounts cannot forward email automatically.

If you have a paid Yahoo Mail Pro account: go to Settings, then More Settings, then Mailboxes, click your address, and look for Forwarding.

If you are on a free Yahoo account, the simplest solution is to create a free Gmail account and use that address with your child's school. Gmail forwarding is free and significantly more reliable.

Automatic forwarding in Proton Mail requires a paid Proton plan. Free accounts cannot forward email to external addresses.

If you have a paid Proton plan: go to Settings, then All Settings, then Email, then Filters and forwarding, then Forwarding. Add your ParentFlo address there.

Note that forwarding email outside Proton reduces some of its end-to-end encryption benefits, since the email is no longer contained within the Proton network.

AOL does not support automatic email forwarding. There is no built-in forwarding feature available to AOL Mail users.

If your school has your AOL address on file, the simplest path is to create a free Gmail account, ask your school to update your contact email to the Gmail address, and then set up forwarding from Gmail to ParentFlo.

It depends on your organization's policies. Many employers and school districts disable external email forwarding to prevent data leakage. If that is the case, your IT administrator would need to allow it before you can set up forwarding.

A simpler alternative: ask your child's school to update the contact email address on file to a personal Gmail, Outlook, or iCloud account, and forward from that account instead. Most parents find this is the path of least resistance.

There are three common causes:

1. You did not click Save Changes. In Gmail, after selecting the forwarding option, you must scroll to the bottom of the settings page and click "Save Changes." Closing the tab without saving means forwarding is not actually on.
2. The verification step was skipped. Gmail and Outlook require you to confirm a verification before activating forwarding. In Gmail, look for the verification code in your ParentFlo setup progress. In Outlook, check your email for a link to click.
3. The wrong email address is on file with the school. If your child's school has a different email address on record (a work account, an old email, or a spouse's email), the school emails go to that address rather than the one you forwarded from. Check what address the school has on file.

To quickly test if forwarding is working: open your school email account and manually forward any email to your ParentFlo address. If it appears in ParentFlo within 60 seconds, forwarding is active. If nothing arrives, work through the list above.

For Gmail: ParentFlo catches the verification email automatically. You do not need to look for it in your own inbox. Open ParentFlo and check your setup progress -- if Gmail sent the verification email, the code will appear there. If no code is showing, remove the forwarding address from Gmail and add it again to trigger a new verification email.

For Outlook: Check your Outlook inbox for an email from Microsoft. Also check your Junk/Spam folder. If you do not see it after a few minutes, go back to the Forwarding settings in Outlook and disable then re-enable forwarding to trigger a new verification.

For iCloud: Check your ParentFlo inbox for the iCloud confirmation email, then click the link in it.

ParentFlo matches emails to children based on the school domain or specific sender email addresses you configure in Settings. If an email arrives but cannot be matched to a child, it will still appear in your inbox but will be marked as unmatched.

To fix this: go to Settings, find your child's entry, and verify that the school domain or teacher email addresses match what the school actually uses. For example, if you entered lincoln.edu but the school sends from lincoln.k12.tx.us, the emails will not match.

Full forwarding sends a copy of every email that arrives in Gmail to your ParentFlo address. Filter-based forwarding uses Gmail filters to forward only emails that match specific criteria -- for example, only emails from your school's domain.

The main difference: full forwarding is simpler to set up and ensures no school emails are missed. Filter-based forwarding gives you more control over what is forwarded but requires you to set up and maintain the filter rules in Gmail.

For most parents, full forwarding is the right choice. The urgency sorting in ParentFlo handles prioritization, so forwarding everything is fine.

Forwarding keeps your personal inbox private. If ParentFlo connected directly to your Gmail or Outlook account, it would have access to every email in your inbox -- your bank statements, personal conversations, receipts, everything.

With forwarding, you decide exactly what ParentFlo sees. Only the emails you forward reach ParentFlo. Your personal messages never do.

This design also means ParentFlo does not need to store your email account password or maintain a persistent connection to your email provider. There is nothing to be compromised.

ParentFlo stores the emails that arrive at your forwarding address, including the sender, subject, body, received date, and AI-generated urgency score and summary. It also stores your account information (email address, name, child names and school domains) and your preferences.

ParentFlo does not store your email account password. It does not connect to your Gmail, Outlook, or other email provider. It only receives emails that are sent to your unique forwarding address.

For the full details, see the Privacy Policy.