Rate limiting

As a marketer, you create various campaigns to reach your customers. You can use rate limiting to ensure your users receive the messages they need without being overwhelmed by multiple messages across different channels.

Blueshift supports several types of rate limiting that can impact your campaigns:

• User level
• Campaign level
• Channel level
• External fetches
• Cloud apps
• SMS carrier level

User-level messaging limits

With Blueshift, you can create campaigns that target the same user across multiple contexts & channels. You can set a limit for the total number of messages a user can receive on one channel or across all channels combined.

You can set these user-level messaging limits from the Account Settings -> Messaging Limits tab.

Campaign-level rate limiting for one-time/recurring campaigns

This limits the messaging rate per campaign, meaning the rate limit applies to each one-time or recurring campaign.  You must provide the messaging rate and also a segment size threshold over which rate limiting will be applied.

Here are some examples of how campaign-level rate limiting is applied. Let’s assume the rate limit is set to 250K/hr and the segment size is 100K users.

• One-time campaign A has 50K users in the segment. Rate limiting would not be applied since the segment size is under the setting of 100 K.
• Recurring campaign B has 1M users. Rate limiting would be applied.
• One-time campaigns C & D each have 200K users and are scheduled to go out at the same time. Rate limiting will be applied to both independently, so your total messaging rate becomes 500,000 messages per hour.

For more information, you can view campaign messaging preferences and messaging rate limitations.

Channel-level rate limits

You can limit the messaging rate to a particular channel (email, push, sms). This limit applies to sends across one-time, recurring, and segment-triggered campaigns, but not to event-triggered campaigns. Let’s say your rate limit for SMS is 50,000 messages per hour. If you have 30 one-time campaigns sending SMS, the total messaging rate across all those 30 campaigns will be 50,000 messages per hour.

External fetch rate limits

You can limit external fetches to a specific rate across all campaigns, including event-triggered ones.

Cloud app rate limits

You can apply rate limits at the Cloud App level to control the volume of requests made through a specific Cloud App integration. This helps prevent overloading third-party systems and ensures fair usage across campaigns.

Scope: The rate limit is applied per Cloud App (e.g., Salesforce, Klaviyo, Facebook Custom Audiences).

Application: The limit applies across all campaigns that use the same Cloud App connector.

SMS carrier-level rate limits

SMS sending limits can be managed based on carrier-specific throughput and daily volume restrictions. This ensures compliance with carrier regulations, upholds delivery success, and prepares you for seasonal traffic spikes.

For more information on SMS sender IDs and subscription management, see 'Manage SMS subscriptions.'