Anti-Spam Policy

Why this is enforced hardest

Reputation for sending attaches to an IP range rather than to any one account. One customer working an acquired list can drop every other site sharing that range into junk folders for weeks on end, and nobody caught by it can do a thing to speed the recovery up. That imbalance is why our response on this page moves faster than anywhere else in these documents.

1. The consent standard

Read alongside UK data protection law, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations require consent before any marketing mail lands with an individual. Consent means an affirmative act on that person's part. A box ticked for them in advance does not count. Nor does an address handed over to enter a competition, nor one lifted from a published directory.

One exception exists. It covers people who have already bought from you, contacted about comparable products, who were offered a means of refusal when you took the address and again in every message sent since. The exception is materially narrower than most senders assume.

Hold an address and you must be able to show when consent was given, and through what mechanism it was captured. Without that evidence, the list cannot be used here at all.

2. Acquired lists

Bought lists and rented lists are refused, with no exceptions. The same goes for addresses scraped off websites, directories or social platforms. A list that came with a business you acquired is refused, unless the consent originally given covers the use you have in mind.

Mailing a doubtful list to ask for permission is not a remedy for anything. That message is itself the breach.

3. Message requirements

• an accurate sender identity, with no forged headers and no misleading from-address;
• a subject line that describes what is actually inside;
• an unsubscribe link that works, acted on when it arrives and inside three working days at the latest;
• a postal address, plus the registered company sitting behind any trading name.

An unsubscribe is permanent. Put that address back because someone filled in another form, or because a fresh list got built, and the breach starts over.

4. Volume ceilings

Hourly sending limits apply on shared and reseller plans. They are sized for transactional traffic, meaning order confirmations, password resets and form notifications, not marketing campaigns.

Bulk sending belongs with a provider whose actual product is deliverability, and which reports back on it. Push a list through shared hosting and the first delivery rates to suffer are your own, well before anyone else notices a problem.

5. Relaying

Open relays are not permitted, and neither is sending for third parties whose consent practices you cannot evidence yourself. As far as we are concerned, resellers carry their customers' compliance, because the account is the only unit we can act against.

6. How we answer an outbound run

We watch outbound traffic by pattern, not by content. Spot a run and sending stops first; the discussion comes afterwards. An hour spent deliberating is the difference between one customer getting a warning and an entire address range needing to be delisted.

• Compromise. This is the usual cause: a hijacked form or a leaked credential, not a decision. Sending gets suspended, we tell you where it came from, and it goes back on once the hole is closed.
• Deliberate. The account is terminated, and no refund covers the unexpired term.

If an account gets a range blocklisted, the work of delisting it, plus the cost of moving other customers onto clean addresses, may be charged back to that account.

7. Reporting spam

File it through report abuse with full headers. Full headers are what let us trace a report back to an account; a forwarded body alone usually will not.

8. Our own sending

Messages about service, billing and security are part of running the account, so they arrive whatever you have chosen. Promotional mail is opt-in, and unsubscribing from it never touches the operational mail. The detail sits in the privacy policy.

9. Contracting entity

HostingAlly is a trading name operated by Fairdeal Renovations Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under Company No. 15026869. Registered office: The Workspace Basildon, 7 High Pavement, Basildon, England, SS14 1EA. Questions to info@hostingally.com.