# Sending levels & warm-up

> Why a new domain can only send a little at first, how to climb the ladder, and what happens when a campaign is bigger than today's limit.

Source: https://knowledge.estage.com/email/sending-levels/
Part of the ESTAGE knowledge base (https://knowledge.estage.com). Full corpus: https://knowledge.estage.com/llms-full.txt

---
A brand-new domain that suddenly sends 20,000 emails looks exactly like a spammer, and mailbox
providers treat it as one. So Estage starts you low and raises the ceiling as your domain proves
itself. That's your **sending level**.

It's the **Sending reputation** card at the top of **Settings → Email sending**, and it appears
once your [domain is authenticated](/email/domain-authentication/).

## What the card tells you

> **Level 2** of 7 · up to **1,000** emails a day — *Healthy*

| Part | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| **Level N of 7** | Where you are on the ladder |
| **up to X emails a day** | Today's ceiling. This is the number that actually governs sends |
| **Healthy / Watch / Needs attention** | Your zone — how your complaints and bounces look |
| **set by support** | Your level was pinned manually and won't move on its own |

Below that, a bar shows how much of today you've used, and — only when there's something to act
on — a line like *"620 left of today's limit — it refills in about 7 hours"*.

The allowance refills at your project's local midnight.

## The ladder

Seven levels above zero. **Level 0** means the domain isn't authenticated yet — test addresses
only. **Level 1** starts at 500 emails a day, and each step up roughly doubles it. **Level 3** is
where the next step would cross Gmail's bulk-sender line of 5,000 a day, so from there you need
[DMARC](/email/domain-authentication/#dmarc) to climb any further.

:::note
Don't plan against those figures — the card shows your actual daily limit, and that's the number
that governs a send.
:::

## Climbing

Advancement is earned, not scheduled — there's no "day 3 is double day 2" table, because the
things that get mail blocked aren't about the calendar.

You move up a level when all of this is true:

- Your zone is **Healthy** — complaints under 0.10%, hard bounces under 2%.
- You've **delivered enough mail at your current level** for the numbers to mean something.
- It's been at least a day since your last move.

A clean sender typically gains about a level a day, reaching the top in under a week.

Under **To reach the next level** the card lists exactly what's outstanding:

| Requirement | Why |
| --- | --- |
| **Publish a DMARC record** | Gmail requires it above 5,000 messages a day |
| **Send a bit more at this level** | Rates need enough delivered mail behind them to mean anything |
| **Keep complaints and bounces healthy** | Inbox providers judge you on these two numbers |

Domain authentication isn't listed here even though it gates everything — that question belongs
to the **Get started** checklist, which answers it once and from the source.

### Holding and dropping

| Zone | Complaints | Hard bounces | What happens |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Healthy** | under 0.10% | under 2% | You keep climbing |
| **Watch** | 0.10–0.30% | 2–5% | Your level is held where it is |
| **Needs attention** | 0.30%+ | 5%+ | You drop a level |

**Watch** also catches something the percentages don't: if receiving servers start deferring or
throttling your mail, you're held there even while the rates still look fine.

Dropping needs more evidence than climbing does, deliberately: a wrongly-granted level costs a
little extra volume, a wrongly-taken one blocks a business that did nothing wrong.

One more case: **if you stop sending for a long stretch, reputation fades** and your level eases
back down. Coming back with a large campaign after months of silence is the exact spike
providers punish — restart gradually.

## Campaigns bigger than today's limit

They aren't refused. When you send a broadcast to more people than today's allowance covers, the
composer tells you up front — *"this will be spread over 4 days"* — and Estage paces it. The
whole list still gets the campaign; it just arrives over several days, which is what a careful
sender would do anyway.

Sending is also spread out *within* the day rather than dumped in one burst, for the same
reason: a sudden spike is what mailbox providers throttle.

If you need it all out at once, raise your level first — and the way to do that is to send clean
mail, not to ask.

## When you're at Level 0

The card reads *"Sending is on hold — no daily allowance yet"*, and only test addresses work.

There's one cause: the domain isn't [authenticated](/email/domain-authentication/). Nothing else
puts you here — dropping a level never goes below 1 — but the card doesn't say so, because a
failed status check can look the same from where it sits. The **Get started** checklist and the
**Domain authentication** card above it read it from the source, so trust those.

:::tip[What actually moves the needle]
Volume isn't what decides spam placement — 500 emails to a bought list will land in spam, 50,000
to an engaged list won't. So the fastest route up the ladder is list quality: mail people who
**asked** to hear from you, prefer contacts who've **opened something recently**, leave
[suppressions](/email/deliverability/) alone, and send **regularly** — a steady rhythm builds
reputation, long silences erode it.
:::