CAN-SPAM Compliance Checklist Generator

CAN-SPAM is short, unusually readable for a statute, and still routinely broken — not out of malice but because the requirements live in the parts of an email nobody reviews. The footer address goes stale after an office move. The unsubscribe link sits behind a login. A sales sequencing tool sends B2B outreach with no opt-out at all because nobody thought the law applied to one-to-one email.

CAN-SPAM Compliance Checklist Generator walks your program through every requirement of the Act as a structured audit. Tell it what kind of messages you send — commercial, transactional, or a mix — and the checklist adapts, because the advertisement identification, postal address and opt-out rules genuinely do not apply to a pure order confirmation. Each item states the requirement, why it exists, and where it comes from in the statute, so you are answering informed questions rather than ticking boxes.

The output is a weighted compliance score, a risk rating, and a prioritised gap list that puts the items with real enforcement exposure at the top. Export the whole thing as a dated Markdown or HTML report for your compliance file, your agency, or your own records. Everything runs in your browser — no account, and none of your answers leave your device.

• Adaptive checklist: Choose commercial, transactional or mixed messaging and the applicable items change, since transactional mail is genuinely exempt from several requirements.
• Every statutory requirement covered: Header accuracy, subject line honesty, advertisement identification, postal address, opt-out mechanism, 10-business-day processing, 30-day link validity, no-fee opt-out, address transfer restrictions, third-party liability, adult content labelling, and the aggravated-violation practices.
• Severity weighting: Items are marked critical, required or advisable, and the score weights them accordingly rather than treating a stale footer and a deceptive subject line as equal.
• Plain-language rationale: Each item explains what the requirement actually means in practice and cites the relevant part of the Act.
• Live score and risk rating: A weighted percentage with a clear risk band that updates as you answer.
• Prioritised gap list: Unresolved items sorted by severity, each with a concrete remediation step.
• Not-applicable handling: Mark items that genuinely do not apply to your program so they neither help nor hurt your score.
• Dated report export: Download as Markdown or HTML, or copy to the clipboard, with the audit date and your program profile included.
• International context: A comparison of CAN-SPAM against GDPR, CASL, PECR, Australia's Spam Act and US state privacy laws, so you know where the federal standard is not enough.
• Entirely client-side: No sign-up, no storage, no transmission of your answers.

1. Set your profile. Enter your company name for the report header and select whether your sending is commercial, transactional, or mixed. Mixed is the honest answer for most marketing programs.
2. Note your audience regions. If you send outside the US, the tool flags where CAN-SPAM alone will not cover you.
3. Work through each item. Answer yes only where you can point to something concrete — a live link, a current address, a documented process. Aspirational yeses defeat the purpose.
4. Mark genuine exclusions. Use Not Applicable where an item truly does not apply, such as adult content labelling for a B2B software newsletter.
5. Read the gap list. Fix critical items before your next send; they carry the enforcement exposure.
6. Export the report. Download the dated Markdown or HTML and keep it in your compliance file. A documented audit trail matters if anyone ever asks what you checked and when.
7. Re-run it periodically. Quarterly, and after any office move, ESP migration, agency change, or new outbound sales motion.

Example 1 — SaaS company with a marketing newsletter and product emails. Profile set to mixed, so the full checklist applies. The audit surfaces two gaps: the postal address in the footer is a previous office, and the unsubscribe link requires an account login. Both are straightforward fixes and both are the kind of thing found in actual FTC actions.

Example 2 — E-commerce store sending order confirmations only. Profile set to transactional. The advertisement identification, postal address and opt-out items drop out of scope, leaving the header accuracy requirements — which still apply in full. The report notes that adding a promotional block to a receipt would put the exempt items straight back in scope.

Example 3 — B2B outbound sales team. Cold outreach counts as commercial email with no B2B exemption, so the sequencing tool needs a postal address and a working opt-out in every message. The audit flags both, plus the third-party monitoring item because an outsourced SDR agency also sends under the company brand.

Example 4 — Agency auditing on behalf of a client. Run the checklist against the client program, export the HTML report, and attach it to the onboarding document. The dated report becomes evidence of the compliance review both parties agreed happened.

• Find the gaps that actually get enforced: Stale addresses, gated unsubscribes and missing opt-outs in sales tooling are the recurring real-world failures, not exotic edge cases.
• Per-email penalties make small mistakes expensive: Because each non-compliant message is a separate violation, one bad send to a large list creates outsized exposure.
• Know what genuinely does not apply: Understanding the transactional exemption prevents both over-engineering receipts and under-protecting mixed messages.
• Document that you checked: A dated report is a materially better position than a good-faith memory of having thought about it.
• Cover the third-party blind spot: Liability reaches agencies and affiliates sending on your behalf, and the audit makes that explicit.
• See where the federal floor is not enough: The international comparison tells you when GDPR, CASL or PECR raise the bar for your list.
• Free, private, and repeatable: No account, nothing uploaded, and a report you can regenerate every quarter.