# Sending policy

A sending policy is the set of rules an account attaches to its email lookups — which signals block, a score ceiling, a mailbox-confidence floor — that decides ok_to_send on every answer.

Date: 2026-09-13

A sending policy is the set of three optional rules an account attaches to every email lookup it runs — the signals that block whenever they fire, a ceiling on the risk score, and a floor for the mailbox confidence of an unconfirmed mailbox — from which Spaw answers `ok_to_send` on each response, with `blocked_by` naming the rule that decided. It turns a 46-field answer into the one boolean most integrations actually branch on.

## What Spaw answers

An undeliverable verdict is always blocked, whatever the policy says. Otherwise the rules are applied in a fixed order: the first blocked signal in the published weights' order, then the score ceiling, then the confidence floor. Until an account sets a policy the defaults apply — the disposable, typo-squat, parked-domain, blocklisted-network and no-reply signals block, and so does any score over 60 — and the policy endpoints or the Sending policy tab change them for every member of the account.

## What it does not mean

The policy is not the score. The weights stay published and recomputable, and reading the flags is still the right thing to do when a form needs more than one decision; the policy exists so that the common case needs one field.

Reference: https://spaw.co/glossary/sending-policy