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Send Limits

Courier's business tier customers get access to Send Limits, which lets you set upper limits on the number of messages that can be sent per time period.

We allow you to set limits on any/all of the following:

  • Global (all messages)
  • Per-user
  • Per-user per-subscription topic
  • Per-account

In addition, you may exclude some subscription topics from the global and per-user limits.

Available time periods are:

  • billing period
  • hour
  • day
  • week (starting on Sunday)
  • month

How it works

Each time a message is sent, we increment a counter against each of the limits you have configured that apply to that message. If the message pushes the counter over one of the limits, we will not send the message. The message will appear in the logs as "Throttled". We will send an email notifying your administrator(s) when this happens. You will receive at most one such email in a 24-hour period. You can check the logs for more details on which messages are affected.

Observability

If you use our Observability features, you will receive a metric counting throttled messages, as well as a log record.

Settings

You can configure Send Limits in your workspace settings. More details below.

Global message limit

This limits the total number of messages you can send during each time period. Any message with an excluded subscription topic will still count toward the limit, but will not itself be throttled, even if you go over the limit.

Per-user message limit

This limits the number of messages you can send to an individual user. To work, users must have a profile with Courier. Any message with an excluded subscription topic will still count toward the limit, but will not itself be throttled, even if you go over the limit.

Subscription

This limits the number of messages you can send to an individual user, for a given subscription topic. You can set a different limit for each topic, or no limit at all.

Per-account message limit

This limits the number of messages you can send to an individual account. To work, account must be created using Courier's Account API. If you send messages to users with an account, the messages will count toward the account limit. Any sends to users without an account will not count toward account limits.

Limit exclusions

Some messages should always be sent, even if they would normally go over a limit. For example, important system updates, password-reset emails, etc.. Simply add the subscription topic(s) of messages you want excluded from limits here. Messages with these topics will still count toward the limits, but will never themselves be throttled.

Send Limits settings screenshot