Email sending limits

Email sending limits

Every mailbox has an hourly and a daily cap on how many emails it can send. The limits protect your mailbox and the whole outbound mail server from abuse – most commonly after a mailbox password leaks and someone uses it to send spam. Without a cap, that kind of abuse could damage the reputation of the whole mail server for every customer.

Where the limit comes from

The effective limit is resolved in this order – the first value found wins:

1. Mailbox – if that specific mailbox has its own value set.
2. Hosting – if the hosting has its own value set (set by support/administration, not directly by the customer).
3. Plan – the value from your plan.
4. Global default – if none of the above is set.

A daily value of 0 (or empty) at the plan or mailbox level means "no daily limit" – the hourly limit is always set and is the main bound against abuse.

Values by plan

Where you see and change the limits

In https://panel.cloudweb.sk, on the hosting page, Email tab, Mailboxes sub-tab: each mailbox row shows the current effective values in the "Send limits" column (e.g. "100/h · 500/d"). The clock-icon button in the row actions opens the Email sending limits dialog, where you can set, for that mailbox:

• Hourly limit (emails/hour)
• Daily limit (emails/day)

Leaving a field empty means "Empty = default plan limit / global" – it inherits the next value down the order above. A lower value suits a mailbox that should never send much mail, such as a contact-form sender. Changing the limit for the whole hosting (all its mailboxes at once) is not available in the customer panel.

From the panel you can only lower a mailbox's limit, never raise it above the value the mailbox would inherit without its own override (from the hosting, the plan or the global default) – the dialog shows this ceiling right next to the field as "Maximum". A higher value is rejected with a message stating the maximum. If the inherited daily limit is "no limit", you can set any daily value for the mailbox.

What happens when a limit is hit

Once the hourly limit is exceeded, the mail server rejects the message right at send time (SMTP) with "Please contact your system administrator. This email account sent too many emails this hour." – the email is not sent at all, and you need to wait for the next full clock hour, when the counter resets automatically. The mailbox itself is not permanently blocked.

The hourly limit counts recipients, not messages: one email sent to 10 addresses uses 10 of the hourly allowance.

The daily limit is enforced by the mail server as well; once it is reached, further messages are rejected until the next day.

Repeatedly hitting a limit can trigger an internal alert to us (for example if password compromise is suspected), but this is not something visible to the customer in the panel – the limit only shows up as a rejected message in the email client.

Next steps

• Managing mailboxes: Mailboxes.
• Aliases and forwards: Email aliases and forwarding.