Email sending limits

Shared hosting is for day-to-day work email: replying to customers, quotes, invoices and messages from your website’s forms. It is not for bulk marketing email. That is why we limit how many messages each domain can send per hour.

Limits per plan

On all plans:

How are messages counted?

Every recipient counts as one message. One message to 5 recipients counts as 5, whether they are in To, Cc or Bcc.

What happens when you reach the limit?

• Extra messages are not lost. They are delayed and sent automatically in the next hour.
• If there are too many failed or deferred messages — at least 5 in an hour and more than 20% of the domain’s messages — sending from the domain is paused temporarily. This usually means a list is out of date, or a form on the website is being abused to send spam.
• We scan outgoing email for spam and viruses.

Why do we have limits?

All accounts on a server send from shared IP addresses. If one account sends a large volume, or a hacked site is used to send spam, mailbox providers may block those addresses, and every customer’s email gets delayed or lands in spam. The limits protect your email and everyone else’s.

Premium sends from a separate sending IP for Premium customers, which customers on other plans do not share.

Can the limit be raised?

We do not raise sending limits on shared hosting. If you need to send more:

• For newsletters and marketing campaigns: use a dedicated email-marketing service. These services are built for bulk sending and handle unsubscribes and delivery reports. Bulk and marketing email is not allowed on shared or reseller hosting.
• For an application that sends a lot of system email: consider a cloud server or a dedicated server. Outbound port 25 on cloud servers is closed by default; we open it on request after verifying how it will be used.

For the full rules, see the Acceptable Use Policy.