Sandbox vs Production

Every new partner account starts in sandbox mode. Sandbox is a deliberately constrained version of production where:

Sandbox is NOT a free trial. It’s a probation period — we want to see you can verify a domain, configure webhooks, and send a few test emails without making the platform’s shared IP reputation worse.

Why we ship sandbox by default

In our first year of operation, ~30% of new accounts caused some form of deliverability damage in week 1. Reasons:

• Buying / scraping lists
• Testing in production with bogus recipients
• Misconfigured templates that 100% bounced

Sandbox protects everyone. Once you’ve shown a clean signal — even just a handful of successful sends + a verified domain — production access is fast.

What still works in sandbox

Everything at the API level. You can:

• Verify domain identities + email-address identities
• Create configuration sets + event destinations + templates
• Send up to 200/day to whoever
• Receive webhooks normally
• Add suppression entries + check stats + check reputation

The constraints are velocity-only — daily quota + rate limit. The functional surface is identical.

Requesting production access

curl https://apis.splashifypro.com/api/v1/partner/email/production-access \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPLASHIFY_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "use_case": "We send transactional emails for our SaaS app — signup confirmation, password reset, payment receipts, weekly digest. ~5000 emails/day across all customers.",
    "email_volume_estimate": "5000-15000 per day",
    "has_unsubscribe_method": true,
    "has_consent_proof": true
  }'

Required fields:

All four must be present. Faking them violates our AUP — we audit periodically + downgrade accounts that lied.

Review timeline

Most requests are reviewed within 24 business hours. If your request:

• Has a clear use case + verified domain + zero suppression-list entries → typically approved within an hour
• Has a vague use case OR no verified domain yet → comes back with questions
• Looks like list-buying / cold outreach → denied with reason

You can resubmit any number of times after a denial — fix the flagged issue + try again.

What approval changes

sandbox: true   → sandbox: false
daily_send_quota: 200       → 50,000
peak_send_rate_per_second: 1 → 14

These are baseline production numbers. For higher volume reach out to support — caps can be raised on a per-partner basis.

Inspecting your status

curl https://apis.splashifypro.com/api/v1/partner/email/quotas \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPLASHIFY_API_KEY"

Returns:

{
  "daily_send_quota": 200,
  "peak_send_rate_per_second": 1,
  "sandbox": true,
  "sent_today": 47,
  "sandbox_free_used_today": 47,
  "reputation_status": "HEALTHY",
  ...
}

Common denial reasons

• No use case description. Empty + 1-line submissions are declined unread.
• No verified domain. We require at least one domain identity in VERIFIED status before approving. Sandbox is a 5-minute exercise — verify one + resubmit.
• Vague description. “Sending email to our users” isn’t enough. Tell us WHAT kind of email + HOW recipients opted in.
• Unsubscribe gap. Marketing email without an unsubscribe link is illegal under CAN-SPAM, CASL, DPDP. Fix it before requesting.
• Cold-list pattern. “We bought a list of 100K emails” is a decline.