Sending levels & warm-up
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.
What the card tells you
Section titled “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
Section titled “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 to climb any further.
Climbing
Section titled “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
Section titled “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
Section titled “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
Section titled “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. 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.