Permitted email types
Transactional emails: Emails triggered by events, such as registration notifications, transaction confirmations, password reset verifications, and system alerts.
Batch emails: Emails sent to multiple recipients, such as product promotions and newsletters.
Note: Transactional emails can only be sent using an API or SMTP. Batch emails can be sent using any method.
Alibaba Cloud only permits sending commercial emails with user consent. Recipient addresses must be from member registrations, and recipients must have actively subscribed to the content. Sending unsolicited spam is prohibited.
Additional requirements
1. Email content requirements
Email content must not contain sensitive words. The content also must not include information related to social media or resource sharing, such as WeChat, QQ, QR codes, group chats, Facebook, or cloud storage links.
The email body must include a salutation, a detailed and compliant description of the content, and a valid unsubscribe link.
Emails that do not meet the preceding two requirements are strictly prohibited.
2. Permitted emails on the platform
The email content must not contain sensitive words, such as reactionary, obscene, abusive, or insulting language.
The emails must be sent to recipients who registered on your website and actively subscribed to your content. Examples include promotional discounts from a store that a user follows on an e-commerce platform, or job recommendations after a user registers on a recruitment website.
Sending unsolicited promotional emails is prohibited. This prohibition includes emails sent to recipients with whom your company has no prior contact, such as non-members or non-registered users. You cannot send emails if you obtained the recipient addresses through other channels without their consent. These types of emails, sometimes called developer letters, are not allowed.
If the recipient is a business partner, you must include their information, a salutation, and an unsubscribe link in the email. Note that if a recipient reports your email as spam, we will freeze the sender address used for that email. We will also freeze all other sender addresses under your Alibaba Cloud account in the same region. After the freeze, you cannot use the Direct Mail console in that region.
Emails that do not meet the preceding two requirements are prohibited.
Note: You are responsible for implementing the unsubscribe link and handling unsubscribe requests.
How the unsubscribe service works
The unsubscribe service is typically part of your own system. Each email you send must contain a unique unsubscribe link that includes the recipient's email address. When a recipient clicks this link, a request is sent to your unsubscribe service. Your service then parses the recipient's address from the link and removes it from your mailing list.
Credit rating rules
Direct Mail uses a dynamic credit rating system based on the delivery quality of your emails. This includes metrics such as delivery rate, invalid address rate, and spam complaint rate. The system adjusts your credit rating automatically. For more information, see the upgrade and downgrade rules below.
Credit rating
After you activate Direct Mail, your Alibaba Cloud account is assigned an initial credit rating. This rating is based on your overall account level with Alibaba Cloud. The minimum initial credit rating is Level 2, which corresponds to a daily quota of 2,000 emails per day. The maximum credit rating is Level 16, which corresponds to a daily quota of 10,000,000 emails per day.
You can view your user status, credit rating, daily quota, and monthly quota on the Overview page of the Direct Mail console.
The relationship between credit rating levels and daily quotas is as follows:
Credit Rating Level | Daily Quota (Emails) |
Level 1 | 500 |
Level 2 | 2,000 |
Level 3 | 5,000 |
Level 4 | 8,000 |
Level 5 | 10,000 |
Level 6 | 20,000 |
Level 7 | 50,000 |
Level 8 | 100,000 |
Level 9 | 200,000 |
Level 10 | 500,000 |
Level 11 | 800,000 |
Level 12 | 1,000,000 |
Level 13 | 2,000,000 |
Level 14 | 5,000,000 |
Level 15 | 8,000,000 |
Level 16 | 10,000,000 |
Upgrade and downgrade rules
For more information, see Credit rating rules.
Account suspension rules
For more information, see Account suspension rules.
Set a maximum credit rating limit
For more information, see Set a maximum credit rating limit.