#email infrastructure

Tagged: email infrastructure

Transactional Email Infrastructure Design: Building for Reliability at Scale
SMTP & Infrastructure
Sam wallness

Transactional Email Infrastructure Design: Building for Reliability at Scale

Transactional email has fundamentally different infrastructure requirements from marketing campaigns — it needs to be fast, reliable, and completely isolated from anything that could drag down its deliverability. This guide covers the architecture decisions that matter: queue design, authentication, suppression lists, monitoring, and how to test before you go live.

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SMTP Server Hardening: Locking Down Your Mail Transfer Agent
SMTP & Infrastructure
Sam wallness

SMTP Server Hardening: Locking Down Your Mail Transfer Agent

A misconfigured SMTP server can be exploited as an open relay, used to send spam from your domain, or damage your sending reputation in ways that take weeks to repair. This practical hardening checklist covers open relay prevention, TLS enforcement, rate limiting, authentication requirements, and the ongoing monitoring that keeps your mail server secure long-term.

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Should You Self-Host Email in 2026? An Honest Assessment
Email Hosting
Sam wallness

Should You Self-Host Email in 2026? An Honest Assessment

Self-hosting email sounds like it gives you full control, but the reality in 2026 is more complicated. Here's an honest look at the deliverability challenges, hidden costs, and the specific situations where self-hosting actually makes sense.

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The Hidden Costs of Self-Hosted Email Nobody Talks About
Email Hosting
Sam wallness

The Hidden Costs of Self-Hosted Email Nobody Talks About

The server cost of self-hosted email is easy to calculate. The real costs — time, deliverability headaches, security responsibility, backup infrastructure, and compliance overhead — rarely show up in the initial comparison. Here's an honest accounting.

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