Deliverability & reputation

Deliverability is the difference between email you sent and email that arrived. The card of that name on Settings → Email sending is where you watch it — and where you’ll see trouble coming before it becomes a suspension.

It appears once your domain is authenticated. Before that there is nothing real to measure.

The numbers

Six tiles, with a 30 days / All time toggle at the top right:

Tile	What it counts
Sent	Emails handed to the mail provider
Delivered	Accepted by the receiving server, with the delivery rate
Opens	Recipients who opened, with the open rate
Clicks	Recipients who clicked a link, with the click rate
Bounces	Couldn’t be delivered, with the bounce rate
Complaints	Marked as spam, with the complaint rate

Opens and clicks tell you whether the writing worked. Bounces and complaints decide whether you get to keep sending, so they’re the two to watch.

The two thresholds

A bounce or complaint tile changes colour when its rate crosses a line:

	Elevated	Above the safe limit
Bounces	2%	5%
Complaints	0.1%	0.5%

Elevated is a nudge — clean the list. Above the safe limit is serious: sustained rates at that level get an account’s sending paused by the mail provider.

Note

Your sending level uses a stricter line for complaints — it holds you at 0.10% and drops you at 0.30%, where this card only turns red at 0.5%. So a complaint rate can cost you a level while these tiles still read amber. Treat the sending-level zone as the earlier warning of the two.

Note

The warning colours always reflect your recent rates, even when you’re looking at the All time view. A great lifetime average doesn’t make this month safe, and the tiles won’t pretend otherwise.

Recommendations

When the mail provider flags something fixable, a Recommendations block lists it — each with an impact badge, what it is, and what to do:

Type	Typically means
DKIM authentication	The domain isn’t authenticated — nothing else matters until it is
SPF	The return-path records for your mail. subdomain aren’t published
DMARC	No policy at enforcement (p=quarantine or p=reject)
BIMI	No record for your brand logo

High-impact items come first, and fixed ones stay visible marked resolved so you can see the work landed. When there’s nothing outstanding and your rates are fine, the card says so: “Deliverability looks healthy — no issues flagged.”

Sending is paused

A red banner reading “Sending is paused” means sending has been disabled for your project — almost always because bounce or complaint rates stayed over the limit. New emails won’t go out until it’s re-enabled.

What to do:

1. Stop sending campaigns. Nothing will go out anyway, and queueing more doesn’t help.
2. Find out which list did it. Look at the last broadcast’s numbers before the rates spiked.
3. Clean up. Remove addresses that bounced, everyone who complained, and anyone who hasn’t opened anything in a year.
4. Contact Estage support to have sending reviewed and re-enabled.
5. Restart small — a modest send to your most engaged contacts, not the campaign that caused it.

Keeping it healthy

• Suppressions do a job. Bounced, complained and unsubscribed addresses go on the suppression list and stop receiving mail. Never re-import them to get around it — that’s the fastest route to a pause.
• Send to people who asked. Bought, scraped and “we met at a conference in 2019” lists are where complaint rates come from.
• Prune the inactive. Someone who hasn’t opened anything in a year is more likely to report you than to buy. The broadcast composer warns you before a send to a largely unengaged audience.
• Be recognisable. A real From name, a subject that matches the body, and a reply address someone reads.
• Be regular. A predictable rhythm builds reputation; a six-month silence followed by a blast destroys it.