# Why is my email held?

> Held emails were stopped before delivery because of a spam score, missing credits, a paused domain or a suspended workspace. Find the reason and resend.

This article explains the **Held** status: what stops an email before delivery, how to find the exact reason and how to send it again once the cause is fixed.

## Symptoms

- The email shows the status **Held** in **Email API → Emails**.
- The recipient never received it, and no delivery to their mail server was attempted.
- Webhooks subscribed to all events receive an `email.held` event.

## Cause

Emailit checks every message right before delivery. It holds the email, instead of sending it, when one of these is true:

| Reason shown on the email | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| `Held because Rspamd scored this message 8.4, which is at or above the threshold of 7.` | The content looks like spam. Messages that score 7 or more are held. |
| `Workspace has not enough email credits to send this email.` | SMTP and campaign emails are charged at this point, and the balance was empty. |
| `Sending from this domain is paused. Contact support for assistance.` | The domain was paused because of a high bounce rate. |
| `Mail server has been suspended. No e-mails can be processed at present. Contact support for assistance.` | The whole workspace is suspended. |
| `Credential is configured to hold all messages authenticated by it.` | The Emailit team set the API key to hold its mail. |

Held emails stay held. They aren't released automatically, even after you add credits.

## Fix

1. **Read the reason.** Open the email and look at the **Deliveries** tab. The held entry shows the reason from the table above.

2. **For a high spam score, fix the content.** The **Spam Checks** panel on the same page lists every rule that matched and its score. Filter by **Negative** to see what pushed the score up. Typical fixes: add a plain-text part, remove URL shorteners and link-only bodies, fix broken HTML, and avoid all-caps subjects. See [Spam checks](/docs/deliverability/spam-checks/).

3. **For missing credits, top up.** Buy credits in **Workspace → Billing** and consider turning on [auto-refill](/docs/billing/auto-refill/).

4. **For a paused domain or suspended workspace, contact support.** These are reviewed by the Emailit team. Check [sending health](/docs/deliverability/sending-health/) and clean your lists before you resume, because the pause is caused by bounces.

5. **Retry the email.** Select **Retry** on the email page, or call [Retry an email](/docs/api-reference/emails/retry/). Retry creates a new email with a new ID and charges credits again. All checks run again, so fix the cause first or the new email is held too. Retry works for 30 days, as long as the content is still within your [data retention](/docs/data-retention/) period.

If many emails were held, resend them from your application instead of one by one. For what every status means, see [Email statuses](/docs/logs/email-statuses/).

## Still stuck?

[Contact support](/contact/) or ask in [Discord](https://discord.emailit.com) with the email ID (`em_…`) and the reason shown on the Deliveries tab.

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Source: https://emailit.com/docs/kb/email-status-held/