Why your account has temporary sending limits
If you received an email or saw a notice in Tarvent about temporary sending limits, this article explains what that means, why it happens, and what to expect. Temporary sending limits are a short-term, protective measure. They help safeguard your sender reputation so that your email keeps reaching the inbox, and they are designed to ease and then lift as your sending settles back into a healthy pattern.
What we'll cover
- What temporary sending limits are
- Why limits get applied
- What changes while limits are in place
- How you'll know
- How your daily limit grows over time
- How limits are removed
- What to do next
- Related articles
1 What temporary sending limits are
Temporary sending limits are a set of guardrails Tarvent applies for a period of time. While they are in place, two things can happen:
- Your account has a daily send limit that starts lower and increases day by day as you send cleanly.
- Your campaigns are focused on your most engaged contacts (plus anyone brand new who has not been emailed yet), so your sending rebuilds trust with mailbox providers.
Limits can apply to your whole account or to a single sending domain. Where a problem is traceable to one domain you send from, the limit is applied there and your other domains keep sending normally. Where it affects your sending generally, or is not specific to a domain, it applies to the account. See Sender reputation by sending domain.
Note: A brand-new sending domain is a different matter entirely. Even on a well-established account, a domain nobody has sent from before starts at a reduced daily volume and increases as it establishes itself. That is not a limit placed on your account, and it is not triggered by anything going wrong.
These limits are temporary by design. Nothing in your account is deleted or permanently blocked, and your contacts, campaigns, and data are untouched. As your sending demonstrates a healthy pattern, the limits ease and then lift.
2 Why limits get applied
Mailbox providers (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and others) decide whether your email reaches the inbox based on how recipients react to it. When the signals point to a problem, continuing at full volume can hurt your reputation and land your email in spam. Temporary limits give your account room to recover before that happens. Common reasons include:
- Spam complaints: too many recipients marked your email as spam.
- Hard bounces: too many messages went to invalid or non-existent addresses.
- Low delivery or engagement: too few messages reached the inbox, or too few recipients opened or clicked.
- Sender reputation: your overall sender score dropped below a healthy threshold.
- Recovery after a review: if your account was recently under review, limits are applied for a short cool-down period as sending resumes.
3 What changes while limits are in place
- A daily send limit applies. You can send up to a set number of messages each day. That number increases automatically as you send cleanly. See Your daily send limit and how it increases.
- Campaigns focus on engaged contacts. When you send a campaign, Tarvent automatically targets your engaged contacts and brand-new contacts, rather than your entire audience. The recipient count you see before sending already reflects this, so what you see is what will send. The rest of your audience becomes eligible again as your limits lift.
- Per-provider limits may apply. To protect your reputation at individual mailbox providers, the number of messages sent to a single provider in a day can be limited. This is a common reason a campaign reaches fewer contacts than expected. See Why a campaign reached fewer contacts than expected.
4 How you'll know
Tarvent keeps you informed in a few places:
- Email: you receive an email when limits are applied, when your daily limit increases, and when limits are lifted.
- In-app banner: a banner near the top of the app shows how many sends you have left today while limits are active.
- Account overview: your account page shows your current status, with a link back to this article.
5 How your daily limit grows over time
Your daily send limit is not fixed. Each day of healthy sending, with low complaints and bounces, your limit steps up automatically toward its normal level. If a serious deliverability issue appears, the increase can pause or step back for a day until things settle. You do not need to request an increase, it happens on its own as you send cleanly. For the details, see Your daily send limit and how it increases.
6 How limits are removed
Temporary limits are meant to come off. They are removed once your account has sent cleanly through the review period, your daily limit has reached its normal level, and there are no unresolved deliverability issues. When that happens, the limits lift automatically and you receive a confirmation email. There is no form to fill out, the best path to removal is simply a steady stretch of healthy sending.
7 What to do next
The fastest way to lift your limits is to give mailbox providers reasons to trust your email again. In short:
- Send to people who genuinely want to hear from you.
- Keep spam complaints and bounces low.
- Send on a steady schedule rather than in large bursts.
For a step-by-step plan, see How to recover from temporary sending limits.