There are 2 limits you need to be aware of regarding our (ss) and (gs) server outgoing mail limits:

1. 50 emails per minute
2. 500 emails an hour

Sending at a rate higher than this may result in account suspension.

In addition to any emails you would send from your email accounts in your day-to-day operations, many popular CMS applications that are used for Blogs, Forums, Wikis, etc. include the ability to send subscribers email notifications. As your user base grows, the sending rate of these email notifications may exceed the allowed threshold.  You can see how this can easily spiral out of control if left unchecked.

Below is a list of several options that we suggest you follow to prevent this in the future:

• Encourage using other notification methods, such as RSS or a daily email digest.
• Limit or Disable these email sending features in your CMS software.
• Configure your CMS to throttle the rate of sending mail to stay within our guidelines.
• Setup your CMS to use a third-party SMTP server.

If you do need to send email at a rate that exceeds these limits and cannot make any exceptions, you should consider migrating your site to a (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server. Our (dv) products have no email sending restrictions in place. Please be informed, however, that sending too much email may get your IP placed on an RBL (realtime block list). In such cases you will need to contact the blocking authority to request de-listing.

Notes/Supplemental Resources:

• phplist is a very popular mass mailer program alternative for sending out bulk email.
  
• (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Servers provide a perfect solution to some of our shared server limits.

Revisions:

10-22-2008: Updated scope of article to address sending issues with CMS applications.
05-29-2008: Cosmetic changes and added note to clarify "per service limit."