Deliverability & reputation
Read your sending metrics, understand the bounce and complaint thresholds that matter, act on recommendations, and recover if sending gets paused.
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:
- Stop sending campaigns. Nothing will go out anyway, and queueing more doesn't help.
- Find out which list did it. Look at the last broadcast's numbers before the rates spiked.
- Clean up. Remove addresses that bounced, everyone who complained, and anyone who hasn't opened anything in a year.
- Contact ESTAGE support to have sending reviewed and re-enabled.
- 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.