---
title: Sending an issue
description: Test, prepare, confirm, then watch the send go out. Every step is there so nothing reaches your list by accident.
sidebar:
  icon: send
---

Sending takes four steps, and the agent can't skip any of them. Ask "send a test" when the draft looks right, and it walks you through the rest.

1. **Test**

    `send_test` emails the current version to your reply-to address (or the
    sender, or up to five addresses you name), with `[Test]` in the subject.
    Check it in your real inbox, on your phone too. Its unsubscribe link is a
    placeholder.

2. **Prepare**

    `prepare_send` checks that the draft renders, that your last test was of
    this exact version, and that the [preflight
    checks](/docs/help/troubleshooting) pass. If you haven't set a postal
    address, it also checks the issue doesn't read as commercial (see [When you
    need a postal
    address](/docs/guides/deliverability#when-you-need-a-postal-address)). It
    sends nothing. It returns a summary to show you: how many people it'll go
    to, from which address, and roughly how long it'll take.

3. **Confirm**

    Read the summary, then tell the agent to send. `confirm_send` takes the
    confirmation from the prepare step, which expires after 15 minutes.

4. **Watch**

    `send_status` shows how many emails are sent, failed, skipped and still to
    go, plus deliveries, bounces, complaints and unsubscribes so far. Once it's
    out, ask how it's doing: see [Issue stats](/docs/guides/stats).

Any change to the draft or your settings after the test (even fixing a typo or changing the accent color) means testing again. A change after preparing invalidates the confirmation. What you test is always what your list gets.

## While it sends

Sendoff snapshots your active subscribers the moment you confirm, then works through them in batches of 50 at your SES sending rate. At 14 emails a second, a common limit for a new SES account, 6,000 subscribers take about seven minutes. You can close the conversation; the send carries on without it.

Each email gets:

- its own unsubscribe link in the footer
- links that count clicks, through your Sendoff domain, unless you've [turned click tracking off](/docs/guides/stats#turning-tracking-on-or-off)
- `List-Unsubscribe` and `List-Unsubscribe-Post` headers, which give Gmail, Apple Mail and Yahoo their one-click unsubscribe button
- your postal address, if you've set one

Anyone who unsubscribes, bounces or complains during the send is skipped if they haven't been sent to yet.

## When something goes wrong

- **SES slows you down.** Throttled emails go back in the queue and are retried after a pause.
- **SES rejects one address.** That email is marked failed with the reason, and the send carries on.
- **The account can't send** (sending paused, daily quota used up, bad credentials). The send stops, and `send_status` says why. Fix the cause, then ask the agent to resume; `resume_send` runs the preflight checks again before continuing.
- **A batch gets lost**, such as when a Worker restarts mid-send. A check every five minutes restarts any send with no activity.

Sendoff sends each person **at most once**. If a Worker stops mid-batch and it can't tell whether an email went out, it marks it failed instead of sending it again. One missed email is better than a duplicate to thousands of people.

## Cancelling

Ask the agent to cancel a send in progress. Emails already sent can't be recalled, everyone not yet sent to is skipped, and a cancelled issue can't be sent again. To send it later, ask for a new draft with the same content.