How to get Email Alerts ONLY from certain contacts, not all emails

Basically, you enable Do Not Disturb, and make the ones you want to receive alerts as exceptions.

Do Not Disturb setup has been made much more flexible, but this has come at the cost of much more complication. To get it working again, do these steps ONCE:

• Tap Settings
• Tap Focus
• Tap on any Focus settings that you will never use and remove them (you can add them back later if you change your mind, and even create new, custom ones)
• Tap Do Not Disturb
• Tap People
• Tap Allow Notifications From
• List all of the contacts you want to receive notifications from
• Tap the dropdown next to Allow Calls From and choose Allowed People Only
• Optionally, tap on Apps, then Allow Notifications From and don’t add any apps.

All of the above is a one-time setup. After that, turn DND on or off with the Control Center button (the one in the green circle below). You can optionally set one or more schedules by going to:

Settings/Focus/Do Not Disturb/Set a Schedule.

In my instructions above, after setting up People tap on Apps. If you want all apps tap Silence Notifications From and don’t add any apps. If you want notifications from only some apps tap Allow Notifications From and list the apps you want.