Please wait...

Understanding how the sending quota and limits work.

This subject is always brought into our attention by our customers.
Setting quota and limits can be done from Backend->Settings->Customers->Sending tab. These settings will apply to all customers registered into the system which are not assigned to a group.
If you want to fine grain these and make use of the Customer Groups, same settings will be found in Backend->Customers->Groups->Group name->Sending tab. These settings will apply only for the customers belonging to that specific group.

Let’s consider these settings:

  • A quota of 1000 emails per month set in the Backend->Settings->Customers->Sending
  • A quota of 100 emails per month set in the Backend->Customers->Groups for the ‘100 emails Group’
  • 2 customers
    • One that does not belong to any group – John NoGroup
    • One that belongs to ‘100 emails Group’ – John WithGroup

With these settings, John NoGroup will be able to send 1000 emails per month and John WithGroup will be able to send 100 emails per month only.
If we consider the scenario in which there is no quota set up in Backend->Settings->Customers, John NoGroup will be able to send unlimited emails, but John WithGroup will be limited to 100 emails per month.
Now, as we clarified to whom the settings are applied, let’s start breaking down quota settings.
This is how the settings page looks like:

Even if we have a lot of help texts on each options, we learnt that combining these settings can lead to confusions.
Here is an explanation of each setting as you can also find it in MailWizz by clicking inside each field. After, we will go deeper into the subject with some examples.

Sending quota –How many emails the customers are allowed to send for the specified “time value”, set to -1 for unlimited.

Time value –How many “time units” the quota is available if not consumed, set to -1 for unlimited.

Time unit –The time unit after which customers with remaining emails are denied sending.

Wait for quota to expire – Whether to wait for the quota to expire when the sending quota has been reached. Setting this to YES, will take the chosen action when the quota expiring time will come. Setting it to NO, will take the chosen action immediately.

Action when quota reached –What action to take when the sending quota is reached.

Hourly quota –Maximum number of emails the customer is allowed to send in one hour. This is substracted from the overall sending quota.

Enable quota notifications –Whether to enable the quota notifications so that customer get notified once they are close to reaching the sending quota.

Sending percent notification –The percent the sending quota has to be over in order to send the notification.

Email content –The notification content.

Let’s create some scenarios to better understand how are these settings working together.

Scenario

A sending quota of 1000 emails, with a time value of 1 and a time unit of Month. The customer will be able to send 1000 emails during 1 month.
Let’s say the customer send all his 1000 emails in the first day

IfWait for the quota to expireis set to Yes

If the selected action is:

  • Do nothing, the customer will not able to send more emails –Pretty straightforward, no emails will go out for this customer. The next month he will NOT be able to start sending again automatically.
    • NOTE! This is useful when you want to allow a customer to send freely in the first month and then to deny him sending again and force him to buy a price plan that will allow sending.
    • Another use case for this combination would be when used with a recurring payment extension that will take care of the quota reset by itself, but this option will prevent the customer to send until then.
  • Reset the counters for a fresh start –The customers will not be able to send any emails until the end of the month. The next month they will be able to send emails again respecting the quota.
    • NOTE! Useful for the case when you want to use the quota as recurring feature.
  • Move the customer to a new group – the customer will be moved to chosen group and sending will continue based on that group settings.

If you will set Wait for the quota to expire to NO, then all the above mentioned actions will take place immediately.

NOTE!

A bad combination for these settings would be Wait for the quota to expire = NO + Reset the counters for a fresh start .This will result an infinite and never ending quota.

IMPORTANT!

The sending quota you set here is better suited for longer periods of time, like months. For shorter periods of time, like days or weeks, it adds a considerable overhead and you might actually don’t mean to do that so a better option, depending on your use case, would be the delivery server settings quota, which is available for hourly, daily and monthly.