Reputation

Your organization has one standing, measured from what its live environments send:

Sandbox environments are never measured, and keep working while an organization is suspended.

What is measured

Rates are counted per recipient over a rolling window of 7 days (never reaching back before the organization's last reinstatement). Suppressed, failed, queued and canceled recipients don't count, and neither do the mailbox simulator's addresses. A rate is only acted on once the window holds enough volume to make it meaningful; below that, it is reported but never warns. The default thresholds:

These are stricter than most mailbox providers' own, so coss.com acts before they do. coss.com can set different thresholds for an organization: GET /v1/reputation returns the ones that apply to yours, check by check.

• Email is measured per stream. Transactional bounces and complaints decide the standing. Marketing bounces and complaints never suspend the organization: at their higher threshold marketing email is paused (broadcasts and stream: "marketing" sends are refused with 403 marketing_paused) while transactional email keeps going.
• SMS is measured by the share of numbers that replied STOP and of messages carriers filtered as spam (see opt-outs and reputation).
• Hooks deliveries that failed every attempt only warn: they usually mean your customers' endpoints no longer exist (see Hooks delivery).
• Content screening blocks a message it is confident is abusive and suspends live sending at once; messages it flags warn. See content screening.
• A sub-account has its own standing: its rates pause that sub-account alone, while your organization's standing still counts everything it sends.

coss.com re-evaluates an organization as soon as a new live bounce or complaint arrives, and every hour while it is warned. A warning clears by itself once every check is back within its thresholds.

When live sending is suspended

• Live emails and SMS are refused with 403 permission_error (account_suspended). Sends coss.com had already accepted may still go out; scheduled sends wait until the suspension is lifted.
• New live API keys can't be created. Sandbox keys and environments keep working, and so does everything that isn't a send.
• A suspension is never lifted automatically. Contact coss.com support: a person reviews the account and reinstates it, and rates are measured afresh from then on. A marketing pause works the same way.

Notifications

Every change of standing is sent to the account.* webhooks of each live environment:

Warnings, suspensions and marketing pauses are also emailed to the organization's owners and admins (those with a verified address), with the checks behind them and what to do. Recoveries and reinstatements aren't emailed. The dashboard shows a banner, and its Reputation page lists the checks and the history of the standing.

Reading your standing

const { data: reputation } = await coss.reputation.get();

if (reputation && reputation.status !== "good") {
  for (const check of reputation.checks) {
    if (check.severity !== "ok") console.log(check.trigger, check.rate, check.message);
  }
}
if (reputation?.marketing.status === "paused") {
  console.log("Marketing email is paused:", reputation.marketing.reason);
}

Any key with reputation:read reads it (GET /v1/reputation). Each check carries its rate, count and volume over the window, and the warning_threshold, suspend_threshold and minimum_volume that apply to your organization.

Keeping a good standing

• Send only to people who asked for your messages, and remove addresses that bounce: coss.com suppresses them for you after a permanent bounce or a complaint.
• Make unsubscribing easy: marketing email gets one-click unsubscribe.
• Keep marketing on the marketing stream, so a campaign's complaints never hold up password resets.
• Test with a sandbox key and the simulator's addresses, never by sending to made-up addresses from a live environment.

The Acceptable Use Policy is the policy behind these thresholds.