Acceptable Use Policy

1. The short version

NorthQuest is for honest, relevant business-to-business outreach. Send to people who could reasonably want to hear from your business, have a lawful basis to contact them, tell them who you are, and stop when they ask. This policy is part of the Terms of Service; you are responsible for everyone using your account.

See: Terms of Service

2. Every campaign email must

• Come from a mailbox and domain you are authorized to use, with an accurate sender name and no false or misleading header or routing information.
• Have a subject line that is not deceptive about the content.
• Identify your business and include your valid physical postal address.
• Offer a way to opt out. NorthQuest adds a one-click unsubscribe link; don't remove or hide it, and honor opt-outs you receive in other ways within 10 business days by adding them to your blocklist.
• Meet the rules of each recipient's country, such as consent and identification requirements under CASL for people in Canada and the GDPR or UK GDPR and ePrivacy rules for people in Europe.

3. You may not

• Email people you have no lawful basis to contact, or consumers where the law requires their prior consent.
• Use bought, rented or scraped lists unless the source gives you a lawful basis to email those people for your purpose, or use lists whose terms forbid this use.
• Harvest addresses from websites, guess addresses (for example by trying name combinations at a domain), or use dictionary attacks.
• Forge headers, impersonate another person or business, or hide your identity.
• Send phishing, malware, links to harmful sites, attempts to collect passwords or payment details, or fraudulent or deceptive offers.
• Send or promote anything illegal, or content that is hateful, harassing, threatening or sexually explicit.
• Put sensitive data (such as health, financial account or government ID data) or data about children into the Service.
• Contact people again after they opted out, bounced or asked you to stop, or sell or share their addresses.
• Evade NorthQuest's limits or blocks: sending limits, bounce brakes, trial limits (for example by creating accounts to get more trials), suppression lists or security checks, or use new domains or accounts to get around a block by NorthQuest, an email provider or a recipient.
• Probe, overload or attack the Service, or access data that isn't yours.
• Resell the Service or share accounts outside your team.

4. Enforcement: automatic sending limits

Hard bounces (addresses that don't exist or permanently refuse email) are the first sign of a bought or guessed list. NorthQuest checks these limits automatically every time a hard bounce arrives. The mailbox and workspace limits count only emails sent in the last 30 days, and after a mailbox pause or a workspace stop or lift, only newer emails count.

• Mailbox: when more than 5% of a mailbox's last 100 emails hard-bounce (counted once it has sent at least 50), the mailbox pauses. Its page shows why and you can resume it.
• Campaign: when at least 5% of a campaign's sent emails hard-bounce (after at least 50 sent), the campaign pauses.
• Workspace: when more than 8% of a workspace's last 500 emails hard-bounce (counted once it has sent at least 200), the workspace stops sending new emails until NorthQuest reviews it and lifts the stop. This also stops new emails from every other workspace the same owner has, including ones created later, until the lift. While stopped, the workspace's owner can't be changed.
• Sending domain: at most 300 emails per sending domain in any 24 hours, from all of a workspace's mailboxes on that domain together, unless NorthQuest support sets a different limit for the workspace. Emails over the limit wait for the next opening.
• Free trial: at most 50 emails per day per workspace.
• Replies to people who wrote back are never stopped by these limits.

5. Other enforcement

We may also act on spam complaints, reports from email providers or recipients, and other signs of abuse, and NorthQuest support can set a daily sending limit for a workspace. Depending on how serious the problem is, we may warn you, pause campaigns or mailboxes, suspend sending, or close the account, as described in the Terms of Service. Report abuse to legal@northquest.io.