Question
Why my emails appear to be stuck in "Processing" status when I check the Email Activity Feed?
Product
Email API
Answer
There are several reasons for an email stuck under "Processing" status in your Email Activity, although the most common scenario is a Compliance one. Let's review the possible causes:
1. Yours is a recently created account, and you don't see any warning notice at the top of the SendGrid UI
New accounts, particularly those in plans with dedicated IPs (Email API Pro, Email API Premier) have a volume restriction applied for the first 3 days, in order to prevent abuse. We strongly recommend slowly increasing the volume sent from your new IP, following the IP warmup process.
2. Yours is a recently created account, and you see a warning notice at the top of the SendGrid UI stating that your account is "Under Review"
Sometimes our Compliance team needs to know more about you and the use you will give to your account. In those cases, an account is suspended upon creation, which prevents email sending and therefore, emails will appear to be in Processing status. When this happens, look for an email sent by the Compliance team after the account was created, and answer all their questions so they can proceed to the account review process. For more information, please see Account Under Review.
3. Your account is not new, but has not been used for a while. You see a warning notice at the top of the SendGrid UI stating that your account is "Under Review"
Accounts without any login for some time (even if email opens and clicks are still reported) are automatically suspended due to Dormancy. In those cases, please reach out to our Support team, so we can transfer your ticket to our Compliance team for reactivation review. For more information, please see Account Under Review.
4. You had a billing issue that led to a temporary deactivation, but your account was reactivated
A billing deactivation causes dedicated IPs to be removed from the accounts. Sometimes, after reactivation, those IPs are not added back and therefore, messages cannot be sent. Please check if you see any IPs under Settings > IP Addresses. If not, please contact our support team so we can add your IP(s) back. If you see IPs under Settings > IP Addresses, please make sure that the checkbox labeled "Allow my account to send mail using this IP address" is marked. Otherwise, our system won't send emails from that IP. For more information in this regard, please review Mail shows as "Processing" in Activity Feed after account reactivated from Billing Frozen state.
5. You are sending emails as you regularly do, and email delivery suddenly stopped
Our system might have detected unusual activity on your account. Please look for an email from our Compliance team (usually with subject "Twilio SendGrid Account Suspension Notice") and reply to it, confirming that you have taken the steps described there to secure your account. For more information, please see Account Under Review.
6. You have increased your sending volume, and you don't have any email from our Compliance team
Your emails might be stuck in the MTA queue due to a high volume. Please pause your email sending for some time, in order to allow emails to be sent out or enable another IP for sending purposes (if you have multiple IPs). Just in case, make sure that your account has not been compromised (sometimes the additional volume is caused by bad actors using your warm IPs to send fraudulent email and our system has not caught it yet). If you notice that your account was compromised, please secure it and contact our Support team so we can take further action.
Additional information
- Emails will remain pending for processing for up to 72 hours. If the underlying cause of the issue is not addressed during that time, the emails will become hard bounces and therefore, it will be necessary to re-send them once email deliverability is reestablished.
- In cases where our Compliance team determines that your account has been used to send emails that do not comply with our policies, all emails in Processing status might be manually removed by them, even before the 72-hour period mentioned above. In those cases, please re-send your emails once the Compliance situation has been addressed.