Sending safety
A client's domain hits a blacklist and they ask you why on Monday. You want to have paused it on Friday. Ballast pauses sending on its own when bounces climb, and makes opting out easy, because complaints hurt a domain more than unsubscribes.
Ballast is cold email software with every feature on every plan. Connect unlimited mailboxes, send sequences at a pace your domains survive, and handle replies in one inbox, priced by the emails you send.
Last updated
Bounce breakers
Ballast watches the hard bounce rate at three levels. Each looks at the sends of the last 7 days, at most the last 200, and never trips before 50 sends, so one early bounce can't stop a campaign.
| Level | Trips above | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Mailbox | 5%, fixed | The mailbox is quarantined and campaigns stop using it. An owner or admin lifts the quarantine. |
| Campaign | The campaign's own limit (0.5 to 20%), or the workspace default of 5% | The campaign pauses with the reason on it, for example "Bounce rate 6.2% passed your 5% limit". |
| Workspace | The workspace default, never above 8% | Every campaign in the workspace pauses. |
- Why the one-click header matters for Gmail and Yahoo: the List-Unsubscribe header explained.
- Owners and admins get an email when a breaker pauses something, and a
campaign.pausedwebhook goes out if you subscribed to it. - Resuming a campaign starts a fresh sample, so it doesn't trip again on the old bounces. Fix the list first: verify it, or remove the bounced domain.
- Set a campaign's limit in its Settings tab, under Pause at bounce rate.
- Only hard bounces count (5.x.x codes, or an address that no longer exists). Soft bounces like a full mailbox are logged, not counted. Every hard-bounced address goes on the suppression list.
Login failures
If a mail server refuses the login 3 times in a row while sending, the mailbox stops with the reason on it, so a changed password can't lock the account with retries. Update the password, or reconnect a Microsoft mailbox.
No double sends
A lead can get each step once. If Ballast crashes in the middle of handing an email to the mail server, it can't know whether the email left, so that send is marked unknown and never retried by itself. A missing follow-up is better than the same email twice.
New-workspace limits
For the first 7 days, a workspace can connect up to 5 mailboxes and send up to 1,000 emails in any 24 hours. Both lift on their own on day 8. They keep a stolen card or a purchased list from burning shared reputation on day one.
Plan limit
When a workspace has sent its plan's emails for the month, sending pauses until the next period or an upgrade. There is no surprise overage bill. See Billing and plans.
Unsubscribes
Put {{unsubscribe}} in the first email of every campaign; launch is blocked without it. What it turns into is a workspace setting in Settings, General, Unsubscribe in emails:
| Mode | The line in the email |
|---|---|
| One-click link (default) | Not interested? Unsubscribe here. |
| Ask for a reply | Not interested? Reply "stop" and I won't email you again. |
- Every email carries a one-click
List-Unsubscribeheader in both modes, the button Gmail and Outlook show next to the sender. Gmail and Yahoo require it from bulk senders. - The link opens a page with an Unsubscribe button. Ballast doesn't unsubscribe on the visit itself, because security scanners open every link in an email.
- Replies like "stop" or "unsubscribe" unsubscribe the lead too, with or without AI labels. See Unibox.
- An unsubscribe puts the address on the suppression list and stops every campaign that still had emails for that lead, not just the one it came from.
Suppressions stick: imports skip suppressed addresses, and no campaign emails them. Remove one by hand in Leads, Suppressions only if the person asked you to. See Leads.