The CSA certifies senders of commercial emails. These must have sole responsibility over their outbound email servers and be able to meet high qualitiy standards (CSA Criteria).

The costs are divided into a one-off assessment fee and monthly contributions. Once the offer has been signed, the one-off fee becomes due for payment. As soon as the fee has been paid, the certification process starts. The monthly contributions only commence after a positive decision by the Complaints and Certification Committee and thus successful certification.

DDV, DMVÖ, BVDW, and eco e.V. members receive a 20% discount. You can find our detailed price list here.

For CSA certification, certain legal, technical and reputation criteria must be met.

The complete CSA criteria can be found here.

The CSA criteria were developed in consultation with various mailbox providers and ESPs (email service providers). These criteria serve as a framework for reputable email marketing and as a significant factor for success in delivery.

The legal CSA criteria are based on the European legal framework for email marketing. This applies stringently and restrictively. Compliance with the CSA rules is intended to ensure that emails sent via the Certified IP List are legally compliant to the greatest possible degree.

The CSA criteria are based on the stringent European requirements and comply fundamentally with internationally applicable law for email marketing.

Yes, you can have the CSA explained to you in two minutes:

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Fill out the online form here and we will contact you for a preliminary consultation. Over the course of the preliminary consultation, we will clarify whether your company is generally suitable for a CSA certification.

First, a preliminary consultation takes place to clarify whether a company is generally suitable for a CSA certification. A contract would be concluded afterwards. The assessment process then begins with the payment of the one-off assessment fee. You can request a preliminary consultation here.

The assessment process checks that you comply with the CSA criteria. The assessment process includes a legal assessment, a technical assessment and a reputation assessment. For this we require amongst others a csv file with all your IP addresses and three of your newsletters or transaction mails.

A standard answer is not possible here, as the duration depends mainly on the extent to which you already meet the CSA criteria. The time you need internally to make any necessary changes also plays a decisive role. The process could take two weeks, but could also last several months.

If the applicant meets all legal and technical requirements, the assessment results, including the reputation data, are submitted to the Complaints and Certification Committee (CCC). Based on the available results and information, the CCC makes a decision on certification. The CCC consists of four members (1&1, Yahoo, Mapp, promio.net), of which two are nominated by eco and two by DDV.

After successful certification, your IP addresses will be activated on the Certified IP List within 24 hours and you will receive your online certificate without delay. Email service providers will be listed as certified on emailvendorselection.com. You will also receive access to our customer portal where you will be able to manage your IPs, contacts, etc. yourself.

By complying with legal and technical standards that reflect market requirements, CSA senders benefit in a number of ways. In addition to improving the deliverability of your emails, the CSA provides tools to protect your reputation. For example, permanently retrievable data helps to identify potential issues that could damage the sender’s reputation. Certified senders also receive valuable feedback via dedicated alerts from CSA experts when non-compliant mailings are sent.

You can find a detailed description of the benefits here.

Yes, every certified sender receives an online certificate immediately after successful certification. The online certificate confirms the authenticity of the seal of quality, displays the benefits of a CSA certification, and contains an excerpt of the CSA quality criteria which formed the basis of the successful certification.

You can manage your contact details and IP addresses in the Certification Monitor.

Members of the CSA team will usually activate your IP addresses within one day. Please make sure that your IP addresses have correct DNS/rDNS entries and that your contact details are entered in the WHOIS data of the domain or IP network.

Yes, please send an email to: info@certified-senders.org

In this email, please specify:

– Error messages from the mailbox provider (bounce message with complete/extended header)
– When the error first occurred
– Which IP addresses or IP networks are affected

As a rule, the eco Complaints Office will get in touch with you if you have received a complaint from a recipient about an email you have sent. In this case, please reply with the requested permission data within 2 working days. If this feedback is not possible within 2 working days, the deadline can be extended on the basis of a “request” to the Complaints Office.

Upon receipt of the permission data, the Complaints Office will assess whether or not there has been a violation of CSA regulations as a result of sending the mailing that led to the complaint. If there was a violation, a notification will be issued.

For over 20 years now, the eco Complaints Office has been fighting successfully against illegal content on the Internet, among other things through work in various collaborations, initiatives, and committees. Further information is available here.

The eco Complaints Office is responsible for complaint management for the CSA. The CSA complaint management aims to enable certified senders to improve the quality of their emails, e.g. on the basis of

– Comprehensive support in complying with CSA regulations
– Forwarding and assessment of individual complaints from Internet users about unwanted emails
– Assessment of spam trap hits and spam marking quotas
– Further development and adaptation of standards in line with current legislation

CSA certified Sender receive the following data:

• Spam Trap Hits
• DKIM errors
• Spam Complaint Rate
• Individual User Complaints

You can access all the data through the Certification Monitor. It’s an easy-to-use online tool that requires no additional technical integration. With insights into your deliverability metrics, you can monitor your performance and address any issues quickly.

For more detailed information, visit the Certification Monitor page.

Certification Monitor

A notification is a warning that something has gone wrong and that the legal compliance in sending emails or the technical deliverability could be endangered in the future. It is intended as an opportunity to identify problematic customers and work with them to ensure that future email deliveries are CSA-compliant. In short, a notification is not a catastrophe, and apart from the CSA, the CSA sender and, if applicable, the customer of the CSA sender, no one else will know about the notification. However, notifications should be taken seriously. Because if three notifications are issued within six months due to, for example, mailings from a customer of a CSA sender for violations of the legal admission criteria, this circumstance will be published regularly on the CSA website.

The publication of notifications is regulated in the CSA Rules of Procedure.

First and foremost, notifications of spam trap hits serve to keep the certified email service providers informed. On the basis of the notifications, the provider should check the quality of the list being used with its customer and remove data from questionable sources (i.e. whenever permission for the use of the email address does not exist and/or cannot be verified). If the notification of the spam trap hits has occurred through the Complaints Office, it should also be informed of the measures taken to reduce the number of spam trap hits. Because if in such cases the number of spam trap hits cannot be significantly reduced within 4 weeks, you will run the risk of a temporary delisting. The decision on this will also be determined by what remedial measures have so far been taken.

To become a CSA partner and use the Certified IP List, all you need to do is sign a license agreement. Through this agreement, we want to make sure that the Certified IP List is used properly, so that all parties involved derive maximum benefit from it. From a technical perspective, we make the Certified IP List available in various formats, such as xml or csv, so it can be integrated into spam filtering on your site as effortlessly as possible. Where required, take up individual contact with us and we can extend the formats offered.

Yes, the use of the Certified IP List for incoming spam filtering is free of charge.

Yes, in addition to improving spam filtering results, the CSA on its part also reduces the amount of effort spent on communication and support with senders, because the CSA acts as an interface. We communicate the quality criteria and best practices clearly to the senders and in so doing head off possible queries. In addition, certified senders can contact us with possible delivery problems. We only get in touch with you if we are unable to solve the problem at our end. In addition, as a partner you can exert direct influence on the future development of the criteria, and therefore on market standards. We also offer articles, best practice papers, and legal opinions that can be used and shared.

Yes, as Mailbox and Spamfilter Provider you can test the CSA Certified IP list for improving inbound mail filters. Please contact us at info@certified-senders.org or use our contact form on our website to discuss the details.

Yes, we even seek this out. Through the feedback, we can identify problematic senders or their customers and address the problem. This helps us to maintain the high quality of the Certified IP List. Ideally, this should be done via automatic reporting. We have identified several GDPR-compliant options which we can use for feedback. But a manual notification is also helpful.

The CSA is a network of email senders and recipients. Please feel free to contact the CSA if you are of the opinion that there is a lack of clarity concerning any legal or technical issues in the sending of emails. You can also make your own contribution if you are an expert in a particular field. If your company is a member of the DDV or the eco Association, further possibilities for participation exist. Simply contact us directly!