General Terms and Conditions

This English version is provided for convenience only. The German version is legally binding.

Last updated: 12 October 2026

1. Scope and provider

These General Terms and Conditions (terms) apply to all contracts for the use of Postwacht at postwacht.de (the “service”) – for free use as well as for the paid Pro plan. The provider and contracting party is:

A “consumer” is any natural person who concludes the contract for purposes that are predominantly outside their trade, business or profession (Section 13 of the German Civil Code, BGB). A “business” is anyone who acts in the exercise of their trade, business or profession when concluding the contract (Section 14 BGB). Deviating terms of businesses do not apply, even if they are not expressly rejected.

2. What the service does

Postwacht provides test addresses, accepts emails sent to them and checks them automatically for characteristics that affect deliverability, such as sender authentication, blocklists, server configuration, content and unsubscribe headers. The result is a report with a score and advice on how to fix issues. With an account, you also get daily domain monitoring, analysis of DMARC and TLS reports, the inbox test and – on request – an API.

A report is a technical assessment at the time of the check. It does not guarantee that emails will reach particular recipients or mailbox providers; their filters take further factors into account that Postwacht does not know. Advice on fixes, such as suggested DNS records, consists of general recommendations. Check them for your environment before implementing them; you are responsible for changes to your own systems.

3. Use without an account, free account and Pro

For an account you need a valid email address, which you must confirm, and a password. Keep your password secret. An account is personal and not transferable. The free offers are provided without entitlement to a particular scope; the provider may change their limits and features where necessary for stable operation. For the Pro plan, the scope described when the contract was concluded applies.

4. Conclusion of the Pro contract

1. The presentation of the Pro plan on the website is not a binding offer but an invitation to submit an offer.
2. In your account under “Pro”, you choose monthly or yearly billing, confirm these terms and – as a consumer – your request that the service begins before the withdrawal period expires. You are then redirected to the payment provider Stripe, where you enter your payment and billing details.
3. Before submitting, you see all details there once more and can correct input errors or cancel the process. By clicking the button for the paid order, you submit a binding offer.
4. The contract is concluded when the provider accepts the offer. Acceptance takes place by activating the Pro plan, which you are notified of by email together with these terms.
5. The language of the contract is German. The provider does not store the contract text separately; you can view and print these terms on this page at any time.

5. Prices and payment

The prices stated at the time of the order apply. They include statutory VAT. Payment is made in advance for the respective billing period (month or year) via the payment provider Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd. (Ireland) using the payment methods offered there. You receive the invoice as a PDF by email to the billing address you provided; all invoices are also available in your account under “Invoices”. You are obliged to provide complete and correct billing details and to keep them up to date. Businesses from other EU countries with a valid VAT ID receive invoices without German VAT; the tax is then owed by the recipient of the service (reverse charge). If a customer provides an incorrect VAT ID, the customer bears the resulting tax. Consumers resident in the United Kingdom currently cannot book the Pro plan.

If a payment fails, Stripe retries the collection over the following days and informs you by email. If payment is not made, the Pro plan ends and the account continues as a free account.

Price changes for existing contracts only apply if you agree to them. The provider will announce them by email at least six weeks before the start of the next billing period. If you do not agree, the contract continues at the previous price until the end of the current billing period and may be terminated by either party at that time.

6. Term, renewal and cancellation

Free trial: The provider may offer holders of a free account a free trial of the Pro plan; its duration is stated on the pricing page (currently 14 days). The trial is activated in the account without payment details, ends automatically when the stated duration expires and does not renew; no cancellation is required and no costs arise. The trial is available only once per person and email address; the provider may refuse or end it in case of abuse, for example multiple accounts of the same person. There is no entitlement to the trial. If you book the Pro plan during the trial, Pro continues without interruption; the paid term under the following rules only begins when the trial ends, and only then is the first payment collected.

• Monthly: The contract runs for one month and renews for one further month each time. You can cancel at any time with effect from the end of the current month.
• Yearly: The contract runs for one year. After that it continues for an indefinite period; consumers can then cancel at any time with one month's notice. Amounts already paid for the period after the termination date are refunded pro rata. For businesses, the contract renews for a further year each time unless it is cancelled by the end of the term.

You can conveniently cancel via “Cancel contracts here” at the bottom of every page, in your account under “Pro” or by email to mail@postwacht.de. You will receive a confirmation of the cancellation stating when the contract ends. The right to extraordinary termination for good cause remains unaffected.

When the Pro plan ends, the account continues as a free account. Data that may only be stored in the Pro plan (such as older test reports or additional domains) is deleted according to the retention periods of the free account. You can end free use at any time by deleting your account.

7. Right of withdrawal for consumers

Consumers have a statutory right of withdrawal when concluding the Pro plan. Details are set out in the cancellation policy, where you will also find the model withdrawal form.

8. Permitted use

You may only use the service to check emails that you send yourself or whose sending you are responsible for. In particular, it is not permitted:

• to send emails with unlawful content, malware or phishing to test addresses,
• to use test addresses as a target for spam, bulk mailing or attacks, or to add them to lists that do not serve the test,
• to circumvent the limits, for example by changing IP addresses, multiple accounts or automated requests without agreement,
• to overload, spy on or attack the service, its servers or third-party check services,
• to use personal data of third parties in test emails without being entitled to do so,
• to route DMARC or TLS reports to the service for domains you do not manage or are not responsible for,
• to email the seed mailboxes of the inbox test outside a test or to add them to mailing lists,
• to pass API keys on to third parties. The API is enabled on request; there is no entitlement to approval, and approval may be revoked in case of violations of these terms.

9. Content of test emails and reports

You are responsible for the content of your test emails. You grant the provider the right to store the emails for the retention period, to analyze them automatically and to show them to you in the report. For the check, the IP address of the sending server and the domains contained in the email are queried against blocklists; links are checked for reachability, but links for unsubscribing, confirming or logging in are not opened. Details are set out in the privacy policy.

Every report can be accessed via a random link. Anyone who knows the link can view the report and the original email. You decide whether and with whom you share the link. You may use reports for your own purposes and towards your customers.

10. Availability

The provider strives for trouble-free operation. Maintenance, disruptions or outages of third-party check services (such as blocklists or mailbox providers in the inbox test) may cause individual features to be temporarily unavailable or only partially available. There is no entitlement to availability for free use. If the Pro plan cannot be used for more than two consecutive days due to circumstances for which the provider is responsible, the paid term is extended by the downtime on request.

11. Liability

The provider is liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, under the German Product Liability Act and to the extent of any guarantee given.

Pro plan: In the event of a slightly negligent breach of an essential contractual obligation – an obligation whose fulfilment makes the proper performance of the contract possible in the first place and on whose compliance you may regularly rely – liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for the contract. Otherwise, liability for slight negligence is excluded.

Free use: Beyond this, the provider is not liable for the service provided free of charge. This applies in particular to damage caused by undelivered emails, by implementing advice from a report or by the temporary unavailability of the service.

12. Blocking and end of use

In the event of violations of these terms, the provider may delete tests, block test addresses, exclude IP addresses from the service or block accounts. In the event of a serious violation, the provider may terminate a Pro contract without notice for good cause. The provider may discontinue the free service entirely; account holders will be informed by email at least four weeks in advance unless good cause requires a shorter period. Ongoing Pro contracts will be fulfilled until the end of the paid period or refunded pro rata.

13. Changes to these terms

The provider may change these terms with effect for the future, for example for new features or a changed legal situation. For free use, changes apply from their publication; account holders are informed about material changes by email and can delete their account at any time. For ongoing Pro contracts, changes only apply if you agree to them; otherwise the previous terms apply until the end of the term.

14. Final provisions

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. For consumers, this choice of law only applies insofar as it does not deprive them of the protection afforded by mandatory provisions of the law of the country in which the consumer has their habitual residence. If the customer is a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, the place of jurisdiction is Mönchengladbach. The provider is neither willing nor obliged to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board. Should any provision be invalid, the remaining provisions remain valid.

See also: Cancellation policy · Privacy policy · Imprint