TrekMail Sending Limits by Plan

TrekMail uses plan limits and safety checks to protect delivery quality. A recipient counts toward a sending allowance, so one message sent to three people uses three recipient sends. The dashboard and each domain's SMTP tab show the limits that apply today, including trial limits and a new domain's warm-up.

Base plan limits

Nano does not include Managed TrekMail SMTP. A Nano domain needs a working custom SMTP profile to send. The external provider can have its own limits as well as the TrekMail safeguards described here.

Safety limits before the first paid charge

Accounts that have not completed a paid mail-plan charge can receive lower safety limits. These values help protect a new account while it is being set up.

The first successful charge removes these safety limits straight away. On a trial you do not have to wait for the trial to end: Billing → End trial and start subscription now ends the trial, charges the selected plan and lifts the trial limits at once. Choosing a bigger plan during the trial does not lift them, because the safety limits are the same on every plan. A new domain can still be in its own warm-up period, so do not assume that payment makes a new domain immediately eligible for the base maximum. See Domain Warm-Up Rules.

New-domain warm-up

For the first seven days after a domain is created, TrekMail reduces rate-based limits for that domain:

Warm-up lowers the limits of the new domain and its mailboxes only. Your other domains keep their full allowance, and the account-wide daily total is not reduced by a new domain. Warm-up does not change the recipient count allowed in one message. Each step starts at 00:00 UTC on day 4 and on day 8. Start with expected recipients and increase volume gradually.

Example: a trial account with a new domain

A Starter trial adds a domain on Monday and sends from it on Tuesday, the domain's second day:

• One mailbox can send to 12 recipients today: the trial limit of 30, at 40% for a new domain. Six messages to two people each use it up.
• The whole domain can send to 20 recipients today, and the whole account to 50.
• From Thursday (day 4) the mailbox can send to 21 a day, and from the following Monday (day 8) to the full trial limit of 30.
• If the subscription starts early, the trial limit is lifted straight away: the same mailbox can then send to 400 recipients a day during warm-up, and 1,000 a day once the domain has warmed up.

What counts toward the allowance

The relevant limit depends on the sending route and the number of recipients.

• A message with several To, Cc, or Bcc recipients counts once for each recipient.
• Webmail and the API check the mailbox, its domain and the whole account, and the recipient count of each message.
• Mail apps that submit over SMTP (Outlook, Apple Mail, phones) are checked against the account's daily and hourly allowance, and a new domain against its own warm-up allowance. Webmail, the API and mail apps share the same daily totals.
• Forwarded messages that leave TrekMail use the account's sending budget. A forwarding burst can pause forwarding until the applicable time window ends.
• A custom SMTP profile adds the external provider's rules; it does not remove TrekMail's sender, account, safety, or rate checks.
• API and MCP sends must pass their own request safeguards as well as the selected sending route and these applicable limits.

For API and MCP automation, one message token allows 60 send requests per minute and up to 500 sends per day, while one mailbox allows 100 API sends per day by default. The lower mailbox cap normally applies first. These safeguards sit on top of the plan, domain, account, and external-provider limits; they do not replace them.

If you use forwarding for high-volume mail, review the Forwarding Addresses guide and test with a small group first.

When limits renew

• Daily limits (mailbox, domain, account) renew at 00:00 UTC. Webmail shows the time in your own time zone.
• The hourly SMTP limit renews at the start of each hour (UTC).
• The per-message recipient limit does not renew: split a large message into smaller ones.
• The API's per-mailbox cap counts a rolling 24 hours from the first send; the error says when it frees up.
• Warm-up steps start at 00:00 UTC on a new domain's day 4 and day 8.

What happens at a limit

Nothing you have written is lost, and each surface says which limit was reached and what you can do:

• Webmail warns you before you send. When the message has more recipients than can still go today, or today's allowance is already used up, a line under the recipients says so, and its What can I do? button opens the full explanation. If you send anyway, the message stays open and the same explanation appears: how much of the limit was used, why it is lower right now (a trial or a new domain), when it renews in your time zone, and your options. Someone who can manage billing sees the option to start the subscription now; everyone else is asked to contact their account administrator. If you are also signed in to the account's dashboard in the same browser, with a role that can open support tickets, the explanation has a Contact support button too.
• Scheduled messages that reach a limit when they are due are kept, with their attachments, under Scheduled marked Not sent. Send them after the limit renews, pick another time, or delete them. They are kept for 7 days.
• Mail apps show a temporary 4.7.1 reply that names the limit, the numbers, the reason and the renewal time. The message usually stays in the app's Outbox; send it again after the renewal time.
• The API answers 429 with sending_limit_exceeded, which names the limit (dimension), the numbers and the renewal time (resets_at). A message the API accepted with 202 can still be refused when it leaves the queue: check it with GET /api/v1/messages/deliveries/{request_id}.

If sending still fails after the limit has renewed, it may be a different problem such as an inactive domain, an unverified account email, a missing SMTP route, a billing issue, or a mailbox-specific security suspension. Follow Fixing Common Email Sending Errors.

IMAP connection limits

These are connection limits, not sending limits. They control simultaneous IMAP connections for one mailbox.

If a mail app repeatedly opens too many connections, reduce its sync frequency or remove an unused device before adding more connections.

Plan a send safely

1. Check today's limits in the dashboard or in the domain's SMTP tab.
2. Count recipients, not just messages.
3. For a new domain, use the warm-up percentage rather than the headline plan limit.
4. Start with a small, expected audience and inspect delivery results.
5. Use a dedicated consent-based marketing service for campaigns that exceed normal business correspondence.

Email alerts for the account owner

TrekMail emails the account owner, in the owner's language, when a daily limit is running low or has run out:

• Nearly used up: the account has used 80% of its daily allowance.
• Used up: a mailbox, a domain in its first-week warm-up, or the whole account has used all of its daily allowance.

Each alert is sent at most once a day for the same account, domain or mailbox, and sends from webmail, the API and mail apps can all trigger them. The older warning when mail apps reach 80% of the hourly SMTP limit is still sent too, at most once an hour. To stop these emails, turn off Domain deliverability alerts under Account settings → Email Notifications. The same switch also turns off other domain alerts, such as bounce-rate and DNS warnings.