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The Outbox

Notes on sending email that arrives: deliverability, APIs, and the unglamorous plumbing behind them.

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The title Where does your email API store your data? beside a card showing sending servers, email logs, received mail and account data, each in the United States

3 min read

Where Does Your Email API Store Your Data? 5 Questions

Where does your email API store data? Ask about sending, retention, received mail, subprocessors and deletion, with Mailfully's answers.

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How to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your sending domain

12 min read

How to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your sending domain

Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your sending domain, check a real message, and fix common DNS and alignment mistakes.

Ports 25, 465 and 587 struck through in red, an arrow, and 2587 in gold, above a terminal where nc times out on 587 and succeeds on 2587

5 min read

Getting Outbound Email to Work on DigitalOcean

Our Ghost install on a DigitalOcean droplet couldn't send its own invites, and weeks with support went nowhere. Some providers also answer on a high port like 2587, and one number in the config gets a droplet sending again.

Two DNS records stacked: mailfully.com carrying the Google Workspace SPF record, and send.mailfully.com below it carrying its own separate SPF record

3 min read

Send your transactional mail from a subdomain

SPF doesn't cascade to subdomains, and every name carries exactly one record. Put those together and sending from your root domain leaves you one DNS edit away from breaking every email your company sends.