Microsoft SNDS Walkthrough — Outlook IP Reputation in AcelleMail Context

Why SNDS matters#

Microsoft's email properties — outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com, msn.com — combined are ~15% of consumer email worldwide. Their reputation engine is independent of Gmail's: an IP that's High at Google Postmaster Tools can simultaneously be Red at Microsoft SNDS. You need both signals.

SNDS = Smart Network Data Services. Free. Microsoft-run. Shows per-IP:

Sign up + register your IPs#

Step 1: Find your AcelleMail sending IPs#

In AcelleMail, open the sending-server detail:

For SMTP relay servers (SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, etc.), the sending IP is the vendor's shared pool — you usually don't have a dedicated IP. SNDS only gives meaningful data for dedicated IPs.

For Amazon SES with a dedicated IP / IP pool, get the IP from the SES console → Configuration → Dedicated IPs.

For self-hosted SMTP (e.g. Postfix on your own server), the sending IP is your server's outbound IP — run curl ifconfig.me from the host.

Step 2: Sign up at sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com#

URL: https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/

Click Request access. Microsoft asks for:

• Your Microsoft account (create one if needed — free)
• Each IP / IP range you control (one IP per line, or CIDR like 192.0.2.0/24)
• Ownership verification — Microsoft will email each registered IP's abuse@ and postmaster@ accounts for confirmation

Within 24-72 hours, Microsoft confirms ownership and grants SNDS access.

Step 3: Daily SNDS check#

Once active, log in daily. The dashboard shows per-IP rows with:

IP            Reputation   Filter result    Complaint rate   Trap hits
192.0.2.10    GREEN        Inbox 98%        0.02%            0
192.0.2.11    YELLOW       Inbox 84%        0.18%            1
192.0.2.12    RED          Junk 100%        0.45%            7

Green is target; Yellow means watch; Red means PAUSE sending from that IP until you've fixed the underlying issue.

Daily SNDS-driven action#

Wire SNDS state back to AcelleMail#

Open the sending-server detail#

In AcelleMail's sidebar, click Sending → Sending servers. The list shows every server connected to this account with its status chip, sending limit, and last activity:

Click into the row you want to configure. The detail page surfaces Connection settings (host / credentials), Configuration (server name, default from, sending limit, bounce + FBL handler), and the Test connection / Send test email buttons in the toolbar:

When SNDS flips a server's IP to Red, the appropriate AcelleMail action is to Disable that server temporarily — preventing further sends from a poisoned IP while you investigate.

In the sending server detail toolbar, click Disable. The server status flips to Disabled; the dispatcher routes around it.

After fixing the underlying issue (e.g. bad import purged, content audited), re-enable and ramp back up via the warmup pattern.

Common SNDS confusion + fixes#

What SNDS DOESN'T show#

# Pull yesterday's SNDS CSV (you'll need to handle the login flow once, persist
# a session cookie or use SNDS' email-attachment delivery mode)
curl -sH "Cookie: $SNDS_COOKIE" \
  "https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/data.aspx?date=$(date -v-1d +%Y%m%d)&output=csv" \
  -o snds-yesterday.csv

# Parse + auto-disable any RED-reputation server
while IFS=, read ip reputation filter_pct complaint_pct trap_hits; do
  if [ "$reputation" = "RED" ]; then
    # Find the AcelleMail server for this IP
    server_uid=$(curl -sH "Authorization: Bearer $ADMIN_TOKEN" \
      "https://acellemail.com/api/v1/admin/sending-servers?filter[sending_ip]=$ip" \
      | jq -r '.data[0].uid')

    if [ -n "$server_uid" ]; then
      # Disable + alert
      curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $ADMIN_TOKEN" \
        -d "{\"server_uid\": \"$server_uid\"}" \
        "https://acellemail.com/api/v1/admin/sending-servers/disable"

      # Slack alert
      curl -X POST $SLACK_WEBHOOK \
        -d "{\"text\": \"🚨 SNDS RED on IP $ip — auto-disabled AcelleMail server $server_uid. Complaint rate: $complaint_pct. Trap hits: $trap_hits.\"}"
    fi
  fi
done < snds-yesterday.csv

Day 0:  SNDS shows IP X = Red. AUTO-DISABLE in AcelleMail.
Day 1:  Audit recent campaigns from this IP. Identify root cause:
        - Content issue?  → Edit copy; flag the template
        - List source?    → Pause that list; re-verify
        - Engagement gap? → Re-engagement campaign first
Day 7:  Re-enable IP at 10% of pre-incident volume.
        Send ONLY to engaged-last-7d segment.
Day 14: If SNDS back to Yellow, expand to engaged-last-30d at 30%.
Day 21: If SNDS Green, resume normal ramp.
Day 30: Full volume.

Related articles#

• Sender reputation monitoring
• Gmail postmaster tools walkthrough
• Feedback loops FBL setup
• IP warmup by ISP
• Deliverability incident runbook