Finding the right balance between keeping customers informed about the usage of their account quotas and approaching limits, and overloading them with noise has been something at Ably we've tried our best to address.
Whilst we have a policy we follow for the frequency of account usage notifications, customers can also customize which email notifications they wish to receive based on severity.
Our policy for sending notifications is as follows:
- Who gets emailed
- All users belonging to the account are notified for alerts relating to limits being neared or reached. This ensures any notifications that may result in disruption are sent to everyone on the account.
- Only the account owner is notified when their quota for the month is neared or reached. This ensures that only the account owner, responsible for billing, is notified that it may be of interest to upgrade their account to save money by buying resources in advance.
- The email preferences for each user are always honoured i.e. if a user elects not to receive hard limit notifications, we do not send them notifications anyway, even if their account is blocked for example.
- How frequently are emails sent
- Quota notifications
- When you near your pre-paid monthly quota (80% of quota used) in regards to peak connections, peak channels, messages or bandwidth for the month, an email is sent to the account owner.
No more than 1 email every 2 months. - When you have exceeded your pre-paid monthly quota (1--% of quota used) in regards to peak connections, peak channels, messages or bandwidth for the month, an email is sent to the account owner. This email encourages customers to take advantage of pre-purchased capacity as opposed to paying overages. See our pricing page for overage costs and pre-paid savings.
No more than 1 email per month.
- When you near your pre-paid monthly quota (80% of quota used) in regards to peak connections, peak channels, messages or bandwidth for the month, an email is sent to the account owner.
- Limit warnings
- When you are nearing a hard limit on your account, an email is sent to all users on that account. The purpose of this email is to provide a warning to users that their account may hit a hard limit, and once that limit is hit, their service may become degraded as the hard limits are imposed. An immediate upgrade is generally recommended at this point.
No more than 1 email every 2 hours. - When you have hit a hard limit on your account, an email is sent to all users on that account. This email notifies all users that the account is now degraded or in some cases blocked completely. An immediate upgrade is generally required to avoid disruption.
No more than 1 email every 1 hour.
- When you are nearing a hard limit on your account, an email is sent to all users on that account. The purpose of this email is to provide a warning to users that their account may hit a hard limit, and once that limit is hit, their service may become degraded as the hard limits are imposed. An immediate upgrade is generally recommended at this point.
- Quota notifications
Further reading:
- If you are concerned about hitting limits and would like to ensure your account is never degraded or blocked, we recommend you consider an Enterprise package and have a customer success manager help set up and monitor your account usage 24x7.
- Understanding all your account limits and notifications
- Customizing your email notifications