Account Approvals

Bento is an approval-only email platform. Every account is manually reviewed before it can send emails.

While you are pending approval, you will not be able to send emails, including previews.

Approval protects deliverability for everyone on Bento. Before review, make sure your website clearly shows who you are, what you sell, how people contact you, and how subscribers opted in.

If you plan to send soon, also complete DNS Setup and review Sending Limits so your first campaigns start cleanly.

Why is my account pending approval?

Strong deliverability is one of the main things we protect at Bento. Manual review helps keep emails landing in inboxes for every sender on the platform.

To achieve this, we require all new accounts to provide some information about their business. This helps us verify:

You are a legitimate user
You own the domain associated with your email
You are a good citizen of the internet

We will email you in the first few hours after you sign up to ask for this information. Reply to that email quickly to get things moving!

You can reply to that email immediately, or take some time to explore Bento's features before doing so. You have full access to the app's functionalities, such as Forms, Sequences, and Broadcasts, allowing you to start building your email funnels. When you're ready to begin sending emails, reply with your business details and we will review your account.

Additionally, we may request further information, such as your historical open and click rates, or your email marketing plans.

How long does it take?

In most cases, approvals take a few hours. Those that don't take a little longer as there is back and forth to request more information from you.

How to speed up approval

Reply with:

Your business website.
What types of emails you plan to send.
How people joined your list.
Your approximate list size.
Recent open, click, bounce, and complaint rates if you are migrating.
The platform you are migrating from, if any.

If you are importing contacts, follow the Import Guide before sending your first broadcast.

Common reasons for rejection

About half of rejections happen because we cannot find out who the business owner is or where they are located. If we can't figure out this information, neither can your users and that's a problem. The other 50% fail due to the following reasons.

Criteria for Approval

To be approved for a Bento account, businesses must meet several criteria:

Privacy policy and terms of service: Easy to find on your website and compliant with relevant data protection laws.
A real business domain: A business domain, rather than a personal email address, shows the business is legitimate and ties your sending to the correct domain.
Social media presence: An active Facebook or Instagram page, or similar, shows the business is real and engaged with its customers.
Contact information: A phone number or physical address helps establish trust. An about page naming the founders or team is further proof you're real.
Testimonials or evidence of customers: Reviews, case studies, or other proof of existing customers.
Non-banned categories: You cannot send on our platform, unless given an exemption, if you are in gambling, porn, or any category that would risk issues with our upstream vendors.

These criteria keep trust high across the platform and make sure it is only used for legitimate purposes.

In cases where a new business does not meet all of the criteria, we will reach out and ask you to provide additional proof.

If you're a startup and new to business, don't worry. We'll reach out and talk you through the process to get you approved. We understand that you may not have all your pages up yet.

New customers can also book a demo with our founder, Jesse, to walk through how the platform works for their use case. Meeting face to face often lets us approve an account straight away.

If you have any questions about our terms of service or appropriate use, please don't hesitate to reach out to us via email or our Discord.