After some thought, I’ve decided to remove a few ESPs from this list based on personal experience with them allowing customers to send to purchased lists. If your company has disappeared and you want to come back, you’ll need to actually stop the spam coming from your network. Every company that’s been removed has received a complaint from me specifically mentioning the address was purchased and allowed that same customer to continue spamming the same address. Deal with your spam and we can talk about reinstatement.
One thing almost every ESP delivery person has dealt with, at one time or another, is a customer complaining about being unable to send to a purchased list. Inevitably, the customer will say “But other-ESP lets us send to purchased lists, why won’t you?” I’ve heard this over and over from many different colleagues.
Of course, the customer is almost always leaving other-ESP because of poor delivery. They think changing ESPs will improve their delivery. The problem is delivery is often poor because the ESP lets customers send to purchased lists. Purchased lists usually perform poorly because many list sellers are not very conscientious about permission.
What ESPs don’t allow purchased lists?
Act-On
APSIS
Amazon SES
Autopilot Journeys
AWeber
Bronto
Campaign Monitor
Constant Contact
ContactPigeon
dotmailer
Dyn
Expertsender
GreenArrow
HubSpot
iContact
Infusionsoft
Klaviyo
Mad Mimi
MagNews
MailChimp
MailerMailer
Mailivy
Mailjet
MailUp
Mapp Digital
Marketo
Maropost
MessageGears
Omnisend
Ortto
ONTRAPORT
Oracle
Responsys
Sailthru
Salesfusion
SendinBlue
Sendamatic
SharpSpring
SimplyCast
SocketLabs
SparkPost
StrongView
Swiftpage
These are the big ESPs that drive the market and they don’t allow purchased lists. There’s a reason for this. ESPs that allow purchased lists don’t have great delivery. Their customers send a lot of unwanted and unsolicited email and it taints all the mail coming from their space. I’ve done work for a couple ESPs that that had all their client mail, even the permission stuff, going to bulk at places like Yahoo! and Gmail.
Purchased lists drive delivery problems.
What’s more, the ESP reps know when customers say other-esp lets us send to purchased list it may not be true. I’ve heard at least 3 or 4 of the above ESPs listed as allowing purchased lists. But they don’t. Sure, some customers can, and probably do, get away with purchasing lists and mail them off the ESP. But if they get caught they’re either disconnected or they’re told to stop sending to the purchased list.
Many ESPs prohibit the use of purchased address lists and for good reasons.
Note: if you’d like your ESP added to this list, please contact me (email or in the comments) with a link to your published no purchased lists policy and I’ll add you here.
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Hi there Laura, I’m really pleased that you’re making it very clear that many market leaders in the email space are outright taking a stand against purchased lists. Would it be possible to add Campaign Monitor (http://campaignmonitor.com) to this selection of ESPs? Our compliance and deliverability team take a strong stand against purchasing or “renting” email addresses; for those who want to understand this issue better, we have a guide to help out: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/guides/permission/
Thanks, Laura – keep up the awesome work!
Just wanted to point out that iContact is another ESP that doesn’t allow purchased lists and proactively terminates any account found using one 🙂
Great post, Laura. Happy to mention that GetResponse also has a zero-tolerance for spam and our policy doesn’t allow purchased lists.
I’ll add you to the list in the post if you send me a link to your published policy that states no purchased lists.
Hey Laura,
Love the blog, always full of great information!
IMO Purchased lists are the bane of an ESP’s existence – They have the potential to mess up everyone’s day if any user is allowed to get mail sent to them.
I’m with SimplyCast.com, and personally involved in making sure list buyers are kept off of the service. It be great if you could add us to the list as well. Our Anti spam policy is here:
http://www.simplycast.com/interactive-marketing-anti-spam-policy/
Keep up the great blog work!
Hi Laura,
Great article. I’m with ONTRAPORT and also wanted to mention that we are strictly Opt-IN and permission based only, and definitely do not allow any purchased/rented/lease/scraped lists.
https://ontraport.com/legal-abuse/
Hey Laura,
Thanks for another great blog post, as always. Infusionsoft is another ESP that strictly prohibits purchased lists among other practices outlined in our Acceptable Use Policy,
http://www.infusionsoft.com/legal/aup.
Thanks for a great post, Laura.
On Mac Ossowski’s behalf – http://www.getresponse.com/legal/antispam.html
Emma also prohibits the use of any purchased list :: http://myemma.com/permission-and-privacy-policy
Over on LinkedIn, Act-On’s chief privacy and digital compliance officer just posted the UK DMA’s notes on where and how to purchase lists:
“Marketing in the UK? Buyer beware http://dma.org.uk/uploads/ckeditor/DMA_Buying_and_Selling_data_final.pdf”
😀
I guess that means Act-On won’t be appearing on this list!
Hi Laura,
great informative post as always!
Here at MailUp we strictly do not allow purchased/rented lists (amongst other things)
http://www.mailup.com/anti-spam-policy.htm
Thank you.
I object to ActOn’s presence on the abovementioned list. 🙂
Hi Laura,
I’m with everyone here who thinks this post is great! The more times we can get the message out the purchased lists are not good sender practices the better. I’m with Elastic Email and we don’t allow purchased lists on our system either, here is a direct link to our polices: http://elasticemail.com/acceptable-use-policy
You’ll find the details specifically listed under the Email List Policy section.
Thank you!
Laura,
Thanks for putting this post together. I’d like to request WhatCounts be added to this list as well. You can see our Anti-Spam Policy here:
http://www.whatcounts.com/company/whatcounts-anti-spam-policy/
Thanks!
Hi Laura, just found your blog – very informative! At Sensorpro, we do not allow rented or bought lists (which is as it should be with all ESPs)
http://sensorpro.net/aup.html
Here’s the problem though, when your employer has purchased a list and INSISTS on using that list for lead generation.
I have explained ad nauseum why this is a bad idea. They look at me blankly and move on with scheduling our emails. They expect me to find a provider that will allow purchased lists. Where do I turn?
All I can find is articles on NOT using them. Well, I have no say in the matter and my job depends on doing this. What about us stuck in that place?
[…] Purchased Lists and ESPS from Word to the […]
Delivra prohibits purchased lists and should be added should you update the content.
Hi, Neil,
If you drop me a link to your published policy, I will add you to the list.
Thanks Laura for adding SharpSpring! It’s great that this list exists; it’s not a coincidence that these companies are the established brands in email.
ExpertSender does not allow purchased lists as well.
Here’s the link to our anti-spam policy:
http://www.expertsender.com/anti-spam-policy
MessageGears is another you can add!
http://messagegears.com/email-policy/
Laura, MailerMailer does not allow purchased lists. Please consider adding us to your list. Here’s our policy: http://www.mailermailer.com/support/aup.rwp
Hi Laura,
SendinBlue too doesnt allow purchased or rented lists. Please add SendinBlue to your list. Please go through the published policy here:
https://www.sendinblue.com/legal/antispampolicy/
More details can be found at: https://www.sendinblue.com/legal/termsofuse/
Hi Laura,
Soundest also does not allow purchased or rented lists. Please add Soundest to your list.
Here’s our website’s linkhttps://www.soundest.com/
Here’s our terms of use (please take a look at 9.4) https://www.soundest.com/terms
Thank you
@Julius: Soundest does seem to allow other types of absolute garbage, though. Take ejuicemafia.com for example.
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[…] lists are prohibited by email service providers (See Laura Atkins’s posts on the subject here and here). It’s not because the ESP is mean. It’s because they’re listening to […]
ActiveCampaign should definitely be on this list!
Alex, do you have a link to the ActiveCampaign page that bans purchased lists?
Mad Mimi, does not allow purchased or any other such 3rd party lists: https://madmimi.com/legal/terms (see Section 3)
GoDaddy Email Marketing (Mimi’s parent comp) also does not allow purchased lists: https://www.godaddy.com/agreements/showdoc?pageid=15991
Hey Laura!
Awesome list even in 2019. Feel free to consider ContactPigeon for your list, please. One of the top Marketing Automation platforms for 2019, according to Financesonline.com and NGData.
Here are our Terms of Use:
https://pages.contactpigeon.com/terms-of-use
(General Rules)
Thanks!
Hi Laura, Michelle here from the Ortto Deliverability Team. I really enjoyed your “ESPs need to step up their compliance game” post (from yesterday), which referenced your list here. Would it be possible to add a couple of additional ESPs to your list?
Ortto: https://help.ortto.com/user/latest/campaigns/managing/ortto-acceptable-usage-policy.html
Autopilot Journeys: https://support.autopilothq.com/hc/en-us/articles/204307079-Email-acceptable-use-policy
Thanks, Laura!
Done!
and I’m still being spammed by the same CSA member I complained to CSA about 2 years ag0
Hi Laura,
I stumbled across your “Validity Charging for Feedback Loop Emails” article recently while implementing RFC9477 / CFBL-Address headers at Sendamatic – it’s safe to say this blog is now in my RSS reader, you have some really useful and insightful content here.
I’d like to mention that Sendamatic also prohibits the use of purchased lists, could we be added to your list please? Thanks!
https://www.sendamatic.net/acceptable-use#spam
Added! And thanks for the COI requirement.
Hi Laura,
I just saw this post and wanted to add that per our AUP, Mapp also does not allow purchased lists:
https://mapp.com/acceptable-use-policy/
Thanks,
Tom
Done! and thanks.
Hi Laura, could you please consider adding mailivy.com to your list?
As a new Email Service Provider, we value compliance and do not permit unsolicited emails or cold outreach to purchased or scraped lists.
Here is our terms page for your reference: https://www.mailivy.com/terms
Absolutely! Thanks so much for calling out cold email as expressly prohibited!