Sending & Deliverability

Email Throttling and Rate Limits Explained

January 03, 2026 2 min read Guide

Why Throttling Matters

Sending too fast triggers spam filters and can get your account suspended. Every receiving mail server — and every sending service — enforces rate limits. Throttling tells AcelleMail to spread your campaign sends over time.

Common Provider Limits

Provider Default Limit Notes
Amazon SES (sandbox) 1 msg/sec, 200/day Request production increase
Amazon SES (production) 14 msgs/sec Varies by account age
SendGrid Free 100/day Upgrade for more
SendGrid Essentials 100 msgs/sec
Mailgun Flex 5,000/month free
Gmail SMTP 500/day Not for bulk use
Your own Postfix Unlimited* Throttle by recipient ISP

*Sending unlimited via your own server is technically possible but ISPs will throttle or reject bursts — configure wisely.

Configuring Throttling in AcelleMail

Navigate to Settings → Sending Servers → [your server] and set:

  • Speed (emails/hour) — total throughput cap
  • Sending limit — optional daily cap

For campaigns, you can also set per-campaign throttling under the Schedule tab.

Per-ISP Throttling Tips

Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook each have informal limits for new IPs:

  • Start with 200–500/day per ISP on a new IP.
  • Ramp up 20–50% per week during warmup.
  • Watch your Defer rate — a high defer count means you are sending too fast.

Use AcelleMail's Sending Server Pool to distribute load across multiple servers when a single server's limit is not enough.

AcelleMail Team

Verified author
Email marketing experts · AcelleMail.com

Engineers and marketers behind AcelleMail — the self-hosted email platform powering thousands of senders. We share what we learn shipping deliverability infrastructure, automation, and analytics so you can own every step of your email program.

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