Limits
There is a 500 outgoing email hourly limit per domain. If you send over this amount in any hour, most of the e-mails will bounce back with an undeliverable error. If this occurs, it will then take some time for your account to be able to send again so we recommend waiting at least 1 hour after this issue occurs to begin sending email again.
Many of our servers have a limit of 30 POP3 checks per hour per each user's connecting IP address. If you go over this you're likely to get a wrong password error message or an error stating "login incorrect". If this occurs, please wait an hour and it will automatically unblock you. To prevent this from happening again, please make sure to disable auto checking or at least set it to something higher such as once every 5 minutes.
Note: POP3 checks are logged and if it is seen that checks are being performed on any email account with less than a 5 minute interval, that email account will be suspended until the check interval is increased to 5 or more minutes. We will contact the account owner to assist with this change.
We do not provide a bulk emailing service. Any mailing list larger than around 200 addresses should use a dedicated email marketing service (eg MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Campaigner, AWeber, Campaign Monitor). Note: Dividing one large list into smaller lists to get below this limit is not allowed.
Mailing Lists Rules
1. Any time you're sending a message no matter how large your e-mail list is you must throttle it. We recommend you throttle it to at the very least sending 1 email every 8 seconds. (Sending 1 every 8 seconds would send 450 emails within 1 hour, keeping you below the 500 outgoing email limit.) If the mailing list software you're using does not allow you to throttle you must switch to an application or script that will.
IMPORTANT: If you do not throttle and you try sending 500 emails, the server will try sending all 500 in 1 second which is not possible on our shared servers. This will cause a very high load on the server and may cause server slowness, potentially affecting your sites and service until this sending process is completed. It is our job to keep the server up and running without being sluggish or experiencing issues. Anyone who causes the server's load to go high will be suspended and the process will be terminated. If you choose not to throttle, you will most likely be suspended.
2. Any mailing list over 200 email addresses is only allowed to be sent to during off-peak times to prevent high server loads. Off peak times qualify as all day Saturday and Sunday, and 1AM - 8AM New Zealand Time, Monday through Friday.
3. The list must be a Double Opt-In list. This means a user has subscribed for a newsletter or other email marketing messages by explicitly requesting it and confirming the email address to be their own. Confirmation is usually done by responding to a notification/confirmation email sent to the email address the end user specified. The double opt-in method eliminates the chance of abuse where somebody submits someone else's email address without their knowledge and against their will. You will not be permitted to mail any mailing list that you were given or purchased. In doing so, this will also be considered spamming and may result in termination of the offending account.
Email Scripts must be able to handle and document all information from a double opt-in list. This includes processing opt-outs (via web or email) and list removal on bounce backs. All opt-outs or bounce back removals must be handled in a timely manner, and outbound mail must be throttled on shared packages to a maximum of five hundred (500) emails per hour. If your account is found to be using a script that does not meet these requirements, we reserve the right to suspend, terminate, or deactivate your script or account.
4. Any unsolicited e-mail being sent will result in suspension or termination of the offending account. We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail and other forms of spam.
5. Any mailling list MUST comply with all guidelines set forth by the New Zealand government in the Unsolicited Electronics Messages Act 2007. These can be found at:
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/results.aspx?search=ta_act_U_resel&p=1
6. No direct SMTP mailers are allowed. An example of this would be a Darkmailer or The Bat!. Any mail should be sent through the local mail server/MTA for further delivery by the server and not done directly by scripts.
