Every Transactional Email account has a reputation and hourly quota. These two features help protect us from spammers that would otherwise send a lot of emails quickly, that could then damage the reputation of our sending servers and negatively affect other Transactional Email users.
Reputation
An account's reputation can be Poor, Good, or Excellent. Transactional Email uses many heuristics to define an account's reputation. We look at how many bounces, spam complaints, unsubscribes, and failed content reviews the account has to set the reputation value. So for example, the more bounces and spam complaints you see relative to your overall sending volume, the lower your reputation will be.
Learn more about the factors we use to determine account reputation and how to improve a Poor reputation.
Hourly Quota
The hourly quota shows how many emails you can send each hour. Any emails you send over the current hourly quota go into the account's backlog. The backlog is a temporary repository that holds any emails we can't send due to a lowered hourly quota. Emails are only stored in the backlog for up to 48 hours. After that, they're deleted from the account entirely.
The account's reputation informs the account's hourly quota but isn't the only factor we use. Your typical sending volume also affects the hourly quota. For example, the more email you send on a frequent basis with fewer bounces, spam complaints, and failed content reviews, the higher your reputation and hourly quota.
Also, each time you send a higher volume than you normally do, there's a period of adjustment as Transactional Email learns about the new emails you're sending. If your account reputation remains good, the hourly quota shouldn't get in your way. If your account reputation is poor, your hourly quota won't increase as quickly as accounts with a good or excellent reputation.
Note: Mailchimp Transactional Email Demo accounts are limited to an hourly quota of 25 emails. If you upgrade to a paid Transactional Email account, this quota transitions to the described process.
View Reputation and Quota Information
There are a few places to view or retrieve information about your reputation and hourly quota:
1. The Dashboard in your Transactional Email account.
2. The Account Details page in your Transactional Email account.
3. The Transactional API using the users/info endpoint.
{
"username": "myusername",
"created_at": "2013-01-01 15:30:27",
"public_id": "aaabbbccc112233",
"reputation": 42,
"hourly_quota": 42,
"backlog": 42,
. . .
}
Note
- We calculate the reputation and hourly quota for all accounts automatically, and cannot change either for you manually.
- If you send more than your quota in an hour, we won't delete the mail. We'll just queue it for the next hour and then deliver it. Emails are only stored in the backlog for up to 48 hours. After that, they're deleted from the backlog and cannot be recovered.