A short guide to email deliverability

This is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to retrofit. Everything we would tell a client about email deliverability in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

The realistic threat for most small businesses is automated and opportunistic, not targeted. The version that survives contact with a real deadline is the simple one.

What it costs to ignore

Authentication records decide whether mail reaches the inbox. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.

The practical version

Sending from a shared address hurts your reputation. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

Common failure modes

Monitor bounces before a campaign, not after. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

In practice

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. Three things worth confirming about email deliverability before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Authentication records decide whether mail reaches the inbox — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.