Litmus services bot policy

Litmus uses a bot - a small software program that operates on the Internet and performs repetitive tasks - to facilitate our Previews & QA link check and Email Guardian services.  This bot makes HTTP requests based on customers' images, css, or links in their Litmus email projects. These HTTP requests allow us to render an email and to validate links.

Request process

The bot follows a regular process to support our services. Litmus first requests a URL using a standard Chrome user agent in order to replicate a user opening an email.  If that request fails, we follow up shortly with a second request using our custom user agent x-litmus-link-check.

Litmus generates requests from a list of IP addresses.

Site blocking, changes, errors, or concerns

The Litmus bot is not a crawler so it does not read or follow instructions that exist in robots.txt files on website servers. Our requests are made on behalf of a human as part of the Litmus user's pre-send testing and ongoing email monitoring services.

If your Previews & QA link check or Email Guardian alerts show failures for links that are working properly, you can allow or add permission for our user agent x-litmus-link-check on your server. This may require assistance from your IT admins.

Alternatively, you can include an attribute in your link's code to skip the link or choose Ignore in Email Guardian but Litmus will not be able to check that content going forward.

If you would like your site blocked or would like changes to how our requests are made, please contact us.  We are more than happy to answer any questions you may have about our bot!