SMTP quota overview

DreamHost limits the amount of outgoing mail from its servers in an effort to fight SPAM. This helps to prevent DreamHost servers from being black/gray listed and added to blocklists, so your email service is more reliable and stable.

Managing your quota limit

When you exceed this outgoing quota limit, you will receive a rejection notice saying the email failed to send due to "Policy Rejection—Quota Exceeded." This means that you have exceeded or attempted to exceed your mail-sending limit for that particular account. View the SMTP quota limits article for examples of what may cause those limits to be hit.

The following sections describe common issues, and suggested tools for managing quota limits.

Viruses, spyware, and adware can infect your computer and send emails to everyone in your client's address book. They may also use your email account to send spam messages.

The sending limits help to curtail the amount of damage done by these breaches. If you know that you have not exceeded your sending limits and receive the error "Policy Rejection- Quota Exceeded", contact DreamHost support with the email address/username that is being blocked. Support can then review the mail logs to determine what has happened.

It’s possible that an email was sent through your account without your knowledge. If that happens, you must run virus, spyware, and adware scans to clean up your computer.

If you need to send emails routinely to a large number of recipients, DreamHost strongly recommends using an Announcement List.

The Announcement List service makes it easy to manage large groups of subscribers, as you do not have to worry about sending limits or hitting quotas. It also manages your opt-in confirmations, which comply with anti-spam policies.

If DreamHost support sends you the output from your logs for your verification, here's how to interpret them. Here's an example:

-------1------- ------2--------- ---------3--------- ---------4------------- -----------5------------- 
Jan  2 07:40:47 throttle=new(a), host=99.128.162.62, from=user@example.com, to=family@example.com, 


------6-------- ------7------- ---------8--------- ----------------9--------------
count=1/100(1), rcpt=1/100(1), threshold=0%|0%|0%, sasl_username=user@example.com

The fields are explained as follows:

1. Date and time
2. Throttle status code:
   • new = Initial throttle start (the first message sent beginning a new period).
   • clear = Throttle restarted (the first message sent beginning a new period).
   • update = Update to throttle (current period in process).
   • abuse = Throttle exceeded. Account blocked until throttle period expires. No messages sent.
3. The host IP address of mail client (Webmail shows up as 127.0.0.1)
4. "From" address
5. "To" address (can also be from CC or BCC field)
6. Message count — number of messages during this period/period limit (messages can have multiple recipients)
7. Recipient count — total during this period/period limit
8. Threshold info (percentages) — the third one is the only relevant one
9. "sasl_username" — account used for SMTP authentication (Webmail does not show this field)

You can ignore numbers or letters in parenthesis in the log output.