Questions and answers

It is an outgoing mail server you can use from any mail program, phone, website or device. You log in with a username and password, and we deliver your email for you. Your incoming mail is untouched.

Because your own route is blocked or broken. Common reasons: your broadband provider blocks the ports mail uses; your address has ended up on a blocklist; your web host's outgoing mail is unreliable; your office scanner's old settings no longer work.

No. ASMTP is for ordinary email: one-to-one messages, order confirmations, scans, contact forms. Our limits are designed for that. If you need to send to hundreds of people at once, use a marketing platform.

It depends on the provider, and we check this live when you add an address.

• Yahoo, AOL, BT Internet, Virgin Media and TalkTalk tell every receiving server to reject mail that claims to be from their addresses but did not come from them. No outside service, including us, can send from those addresses. We will not let you add one.
• iCloud, GMX and Proton ask receivers to put such mail in junk. We will warn you and advise against it.
• Gmail, Outlook.com, Hotmail and Live currently allow it, but their rules tighten every year and mail can still be marked as suspicious.

The reliable answer is to send from your own domain. If you do not have one, we can point you to how to get one for a few pounds a year.

Two small changes in your domain's DNS: one record for our DKIM signature, and one line added to your SPF record. Your customer area shows you exactly what to add and checks it for you. If you are not sure how, email us the name of the company that manages your domain and we will talk you through it.

You can sign up and pay in a few minutes. We look at every new account by hand, normally within one working day, often much sooner. You get an email the moment you are approved.

Because the alternative is letting spammers in, and then everyone's mail starts going to junk. A short check at the start is the price of reliable delivery afterwards.

For the first 14 days a new login sends at a quarter of its plan's daily limit. After 7 clean days it rises to half, and after 14 clean days to the full limit. Clean means no messages held as spam, no complaints, and very few bounces. If you have a genuine need for more sooner, email us.

Your mail program will get a "try again later" answer and normally retries on its own. Nothing is lost. You can see your usage in your customer area.

Need to send more? Tell us why and we will look at it: use "Request a higher limit" in your customer area. There is no "buy more" button, because we only raise limits for mail people want.

Yes. Buy a time pass: an hour for £4.99 (10 messages), a day for £9.99 (15 messages), a week for £29.99 (25 a day) or a month for £49.99 (50 a day). A pass is paid once and does not renew.

We still check you first, as with any new account. The clock starts with your first message, not when you buy, but please start within 7 days of approval. When the time is up or the messages are used, sending stops; you can buy another at any time and it starts when the last one ends.

We make your passwords long and random, so they are hard to guess. If a login is used from a new country, we freeze it and email you to ask if it was you. If it suddenly sends far more than usual, we freeze it and look. You can reset a password from your customer area at any time.

We do not read or store the content of your messages. We keep a log line for each message (time, sender, recipients, size, result) to run the service and deal with problems. See our Privacy Policy for how long we keep it.

Yes. The Office plan includes five. On any plan you can add extra Device or Personal logins to the same account.

Consumers can cancel within 14 days of buying for a full refund, provided the login has not been used to send. Beyond that, we do not refund part-years. We do not refund accounts closed for breaking the Acceptable Use Policy.

England. ASMTP is a service of RMD World, which has provided hosting and email services for more than 20 years.

From our server in Europe to Amazon's email delivery service in London, then to the recipient. Amazon is a "sub-processor" in privacy-law terms; details are in our Privacy Policy.