Acceptable Use Policy
Draft, 1 November 2026
Shared sending only works if everyone on it is careful. One bad sender can damage delivery for all. This policy is part of the Terms of Service.
Banned, without exception
- Spam: any bulk or commercial mail to people who did not ask to receive it from you.
- Purchased, rented, scraped, harvested or shared lists, whatever the seller says about consent. Permission cannot be bought.
- Phishing, impersonation, forged sender details, or mail designed to look like it comes from someone else.
- Malware, or links to it.
- Illegal content or fraud, including deceptive offers and pyramid schemes.
- Content that sexually exploits minors. We report it.
- Harassment, threats, or incitement to violence.
- Getting around our limits: several accounts to dodge a cap or a suspension, rotating domains to escape reputation, or disguising content to pass filters.
What we require
- Permission you can show. Be able to say how and when each recipient agreed. The batch lane requires you to declare it on each message, and we rely on that declaration.
- A working unsubscribe on anything that is not strictly transactional, honoured promptly. The batch lane requires List-Unsubscribe and one-click unsubscribe.
- Honest headers. A From address you control, a real subject, and an identifiable sender, with a postal address where the law asks for one.
- The right lane. Marketing and bulk mail go on the batch lane, not express or standard.
- Compliance with the law where you and your recipients are, such as CAN-SPAM, GDPR, CASL and PECR.
- Clean lists. Remove addresses that bounce and people who have stopped engaging.
Limits we enforce
| Measure | Warning | Automatic pause |
|---|---|---|
| Bounce rate (last 1,000 recipients) | 2% | 4% |
| Complaint rate | 0.05% | 0.08% |
New accounts and domains warm up: up to 100 recipients on the first day, doubling each day while bounces stay under 2%. Hard bounces and complaints are suppressed automatically, and those suppressions cannot be removed by hand. The same content going to many recipients moves to the batch lane.
What happens if this is broken
We may hold or refuse mail, pause sending, or close the account, with or without warning depending on the risk. Pauses are reviewed by a person. Prepaid credits are not refunded if an account is closed for a breach of this policy. [For legal review.]
Reporting abuse
If you received unwanted mail that came through us, send it with its headers to abuse@lifetree.email. We read these.