At EmailOctopus, we're passionate about making email marketing more accessible. We're also dedicated to preventing abuse, and ensuring that the platform is used responsibly. Everyone knows the frustration of receiving unwanted spam or scam emails, so we do all we can to make sure EmailOctopus doesn't enable this sort of activity.

Keeping the platform free from unethical practices helps us all – protecting our reputation, and maintaining our deliverability. Our Acceptable Use Policy lets you know what what types of activity you can't use EmailOctopus for.

Our policy

In short, don't use EmailOctopus to send or promote anything illegal, harmful, offensive or which constitutes harassment. We also don't allow content that is, at our sole discretion, false, inaccurate or misleading in a way that could cause confusion around important events and topics.

The content you send to your contacts must be requested by your users and you must have permission to contact them. We ask that you respect your local laws and those applicable to your subscribers, and that you adhere to all applicable marketing regulations, such as CAN-SPAM.

All accounts created with EmailOctopus will be vetted by our team to ensure they won't negatively impact the service. We look at various factors including the types of emails you'll send, your industry, the age of your list and whether any 'spam traps' feature in that list.

Although we don't prohibit any specific legitimate industries, some may be subject to additional scrutiny. These include:

Adult industry, including, but not limited to, pornography
Affiliate marketing
Cryptocurrency
Dating services
Financial products and services
Gambling products and services
Information courses
Products and services related to the prevention, cure and treatment of COVID-19

EmailOctopus Connect

EmailOctopus Connect links to Amazon SES and other email service providers, so if you use this service then you must ensure your content doesn't breach any of their requirements. If you are a user of EmailOctopus Connect, please make yourself familiar with these.

Multiple accounts

If your account is suspended due to activity in breach of our policy, please be aware that creating new accounts to avoid suspension is strictly forbidden.

Your email statistics

We monitor the sending statistics of all users to gain insight into the quality of your lists and content. In general, hard bounce rates should be under 5%, open rates should be above 3%, and spam complaint rates should be less than 0.1%.

Prohibited behaviour

As an EmailOctopus user, you must not:

Use, or try to use, someone else's account without their permission
Create a false identity on EmailOctopus
Use EmailOctopus for any unlawful or fraudulent activity
Identify or misrepresent yourself in an incorrect or misleading manner
Create a user profile for anyone other than yourself – either as a business, or as an individual – or use an image of anyone other than yourself in your profile
Claim to be associated with, or endorsed by, EmailOctopus unless you have entered into a written agreement with us
Perform any actions intended to avoid free plan and billing thresholds, including regular deletion or modification of lists
'White label' or otherwise present yourself as the original provider of the EmailOctopus platform or any EmailOctopus material or processes
Tamper with, disable or override any security component or process of EmailOctopus, or attempt to do any of those things
'Mirror', 'scrape', 'crawl' or 'spider' any page or service on the EmailOctopus platform
Include any of the following in your email campaigns: viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar code designed to adversely affect the operation of computer software or hardware

How we deal with breaches of the Acceptable Use Policy

We reserve the right to limit any account on EmailOctopus, for any reason. Failure to comply with the Acceptable Use Policy constitutes a material breach of the EmailOctopus Terms of Use, upon which you are permitted to use the service. In the event of a policy breach, we may do any or all of the following:

Withdraw your right to use the service, temporarily or permanently
Remove your content and contacts from the platform, temporarily or permanently
Issue you a warning
Start legal proceedings against you for the reimbursement of any costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach
Take further legal action against you
Disclose any relevant information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary or as required by law

We exclude our liability for all action we may take in response to breaches of this Acceptable Use Policy. The actions we may take are not limited to those described above, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

Thank you for helping us keep EmailOctopus a safe, clean, efficient system for everyone.