Outlook Thinks You’re a Bulk Sender. Here’s Why That’s Killing Your Product Experience.

Most developers assume that if their email is transactional, it will land in the inbox. It makes sense. A user signs up, you send a welcome message. They reset a password, you confirm it. Nothing spammy about that. But if you're sending those from a system designed for bulk mail, Outlook disagrees.

Here's the core problem: most email providers optimize for marketing. Newsletters, promotions, campaigns. They batch and blast. But transactional emails aren't campaigns. They’re triggers. They’re personal. When you send them using the same IPs and infrastructure as marketing messages, Outlook doesn't make the distinction. You get flagged.

Once that happens, your messages start arriving late. Or in spam. Or not at all.

From the user’s perspective, that’s a broken experience. They click “reset password” and nothing happens. They request a confirmation email and it doesn’t show up. If you’re lucky, they check spam and dig it out. If you’re not, they churn.

What’s worse, this pattern gets baked into your reputation. The more users ignore or delete your messages because they landed in the wrong place, the more providers assume your future messages are junk. It creates a feedback loop that’s hard to escape.

Lemon avoids that by separating transactional from bulk entirely. It doesn’t mix your app’s emails with newsletters or promotions. It doesn’t let your messages ride along with others that might be flagged. It uses smart routing, clean IPs, and an infrastructure tuned specifically for critical, one-to-one messaging.

Outlook is strict because it has to be. Scammers use the same language you do. “Your account was created.” “Confirm your login.” It looks identical. So the only way to stand out is by how you send, not what you send.

If you're still sending app emails through bulk platforms, you're being misread. And misread as a spammer is the worst way to start a relationship.

Don’t let infrastructure confuse your intent. Use the right tool for the right kind of email. That’s what Lemon was built for.