Outgrowing a plan, and outgrowing hosted sending

Issue Mint has two boundaries at 15,000 active subscribers, and they are not the same boundary. One is a billing limit, which moves your plan up and asks nothing of you. The other is a sending limit, which asks you to connect your own sending account and cannot be moved by paying more.

They share a number on purpose, and that is exactly why the two messages get confused. This page is here to keep them apart.

The plan limit moves your bill and nothing else

Crossing a plan’s subscriber ceiling changes what you pay and changes nothing else about your newsletter.

Issue Mint counts your active subscribers each night, and a list that stays above the ceiling moves up the ladder on its own. Sending carries on throughout, signups carry on, and no issue is ever held for a billing reason. Automatic plan changes covers the timing, and the short version is that there is nothing for you to do.

The hosted sending cap changes who does the sending

Hosted sending stops at 15,000 active subscribers per account, and a larger plan does not lift it.

The warning starts at 12,000 subscribers, there is a 30 days grace period after the cap itself, and when that expires hosted sending stops. Only sending stops: the website, the archive, the list, the dashboard and every number in it are exactly as they were, and connecting your own Amazon SES or SMTP account starts sending again straight away. The monthly email allowance behaves the same way, and both are set out on the limits on hosted sending.

Why they are the same number

The cap is set equal to the Pro plan’s subscriber limit deliberately, so the sending boundary lands on a plan edge rather than somewhere arbitrary.

That choice makes the boundary easier to remember and harder to interpret, which is the trade this page pays for. The consequence worth knowing is that the cap does not scale with your plan. A Scale customer at $149 a month and a Summit customer at $249 a month meet hosted sending’s cap in precisely the same place as a Pro customer, because the cost we are managing there is delivery and reputation rather than revenue.

Telling the two messages apart

The quickest test is what the message asks of you. A message about your bill tells you what will happen and on what date. A message about sending asks you to do something.

The billing emails name your subscriber total, the ceiling you have passed, the plan you are moving to and the date of the move. They end by saying nothing stops in the meantime, because nothing does. The sending emails talk about the size we can send for, or this month’s included sending, and every one of them ends with a link to set up your own sending account. On the dashboard, the same split holds: the usage meter on your billing page is the plan, and the banner offering to set up your own sending is the cap.

The fortnight when both arrive

An account crossing 15,000 subscribers gets both messages within days of each other, and both are true.

The plan moves up to Scale, because the list has outgrown Pro. Separately, hosted sending starts its grace clock, because the list has outgrown what we will carry. Neither one resolves the other: the upgrade does not buy more hosted sending, and connecting your own sending account does not put your plan back. Reading the two as a single escalating demand is the mistake this page exists to prevent, and it is an easy one to make when they land in the same inbox in the same week.

What each one actually costs

An upgrade costs the difference between two monthly prices. Moving your sending costs nothing on your Issue Mint bill.

Your own Amazon SES account is an account with Amazon, a handful of DNS records, and a delivery bill paid to them directly, which at newsletter volumes is usually small. Issue Mint charges the same either way, and how sending works is the case for the arrangement rather than the mechanics of it. When you are ready, should you move sending off Issue Mint is the decision written out, and your own Amazon SES account is the procedure.