SendWP is a transactional email service for WordPress sites. This policy explains what you may and may not send through SendWP. It forms part of our Terms of Service, and “you” and “Publisher” mean the same as they do there. It applies to all mail sent through SendWP, whether through the WordPress plugin, the API or any partner integration.
Every SendWP customer shares our sending infrastructure and reputation. One account sending unwanted mail can hurt delivery for everyone, so we enforce this policy strictly.
1. Transactional mail only
SendWP is for messages a person expects because of something they did on your site, or because of a relationship they have with it. For example:
- account mail: sign-up confirmations, password resets, login codes and security alerts;
- order and payment mail: receipts, invoices, shipping updates, subscription renewals and failed payments;
- form and booking mail: form notifications, booking confirmations and reminders;
- membership and course mail about the person’s own account or enrolment;
- notifications a person has turned on, such as comment replies or new-post alerts they subscribed to (see section 3).
SendWP is not a marketing or bulk email service. Don’t use it to send newsletters, promotions, sales announcements or marketing campaigns. Use a dedicated marketing email provider for those.
2. No cold email, and no bought, rented or harvested lists
You may not use SendWP to send:
- cold email: unsolicited messages to people who haven’t asked to hear from you. This includes sales outreach, lead generation, “personalised” prospecting sequences and partnership pitches, however few you send;
- mail to addresses that were bought, rented, borrowed, shared, traded, appended or scraped, or collected any other way than the person giving you their address for this purpose;
- mail to role or list addresses you weren’t given, such as info@ or sales@ addresses found online;
- mail to addresses that were generated or guessed, including by dictionary or pattern guessing.
These rules apply even where the law of your country would allow the mail.
3. Opt-in for any mail sent to a list
A message sent to a list, rather than because of one person’s own action, needs confirmed opt-in. Post and comment subscriptions and announcements to members are examples. Confirmed opt-in means the person:
- asked to receive that kind of message, and
- confirmed their address by clicking a link sent to it before you added them to the list.
Every list message must include a working one-click unsubscribe: an RFC 8058 List-Unsubscribe header and a visible link. Honour each unsubscribe within 2 days, and never mail that address on that list again. You must be able to show us when and how each address opted in.
4. Honest, identifiable mail
- Send only from domains you own or have permission to use, and verify them with SendWP when we ask.
- Don’t forge or disguise headers, sender names or the From address, and don’t use look-alike (“cousin”) domains.
- Subject lines and content must not mislead.
- Don’t send phishing, malware or links to either, and don’t hide links behind public URL shorteners.
- Don’t send anything illegal, fraudulent or infringing. Our Terms of Service list more.
- Follow the anti-spam and privacy laws that apply to you and your recipients, including CAN-SPAM, CASL, the GDPR and the ePrivacy rules.
5. Keep your list clean
- Stop sending to addresses that hard-bounce or complain. If SendWP stops sending to an address, don’t try to get around it, for example by re-adding the address or changing its case or tags.
- Keep bounces and complaints low. As a guide, if an account’s bounce rate goes above 5% or its complaint rate goes above 0.3%, we review it and may throttle or suspend it. Healthy transactional mail stays far below both.
- New accounts may start with a daily sending limit that rises as the account builds a good record.
6. Protect your account
Keep your API keys, site secrets and login details private, and tell us at once if you think they’ve been exposed. You’re responsible for mail sent with your credentials, including mail sent from a compromised site.
7. How we enforce this policy
We watch sending patterns, bounces, complaints, blocklist listings and abuse reports. If we believe an account breaks this policy, or that its mail puts the service at risk, we may do any of the following without notice:
- hold or delay mail, or lower the account’s sending limit;
- pause sending from the account, or from a site or domain on it;
- suspend or close the account, as our Terms of Service allow.
We’ll normally tell you what we found and, where it’s safe, give you a chance to fix it. For cold email, bought lists, phishing, malware or a compromised account, we suspend first and talk after. We don’t refund fees for an account suspended or closed for breaking this policy.
8. Reporting abuse
If you received unwanted mail sent through SendWP, forward it with full headers to abuse@sendwp.com. We review every report.
9. Changes
We may update this policy. We’ll post each new version here with the date it takes effect. If you keep using SendWP after that date, you accept the new version.