Transactional Email Best Practices
Foundational habits for authentication, content, and monitoring.
Read guideEmail Deliverability Checklist
Run through this checklist before launch and during weekly operations. Consistency beats one-off tricks every time.
How to use this checklist
Work through each section top to bottom before your first production send. After launch, revisit the operational sections weekly and after any flow that changes who receives mail or how often.
Domain and DNS
Authentication records are the foundation. Without them, even perfect content may land in spam.
- Verify SPF and DKIM for every sending domain in Mailsurge.
- Send from the same domain users expect for your product.
- Confirm DNS propagation before shifting high-volume traffic.
- Document who owns DNS changes and how quickly they can be deployed.
Recipient quality
Bad addresses and unexpected mail drive complaints faster than anything else.
- Only send to users who requested or clearly expect the message.
- Suppress hard bounces and repeated soft bounces automatically.
- Validate email format at signup, checkout, and profile update.
- Never import purchased or scraped lists into transactional flows.
Message quality
Content signals help providers decide whether mail belongs in the inbox.
- Use specific subject lines that match the message intent.
- Provide both HTML and plain-text content when possible.
- Avoid URL shorteners and suspicious link patterns.
- Keep HTML lightweight — heavy images and broken markup hurt placement.
Event processing
Webhooks turn delivery feedback into automated list hygiene.
- Consume webhook events for deliveries, bounces, and complaints.
- Make webhook handlers idempotent to handle retries safely.
- Feed complaint and bounce data into global suppression lists.
- Alert when complaint or hard-bounce rates exceed your internal thresholds.
Operational monitoring
Catch regressions before customers open support tickets.
- Track complaint and bounce percentages by domain and message type.
- Alert on unusual spikes in failures, delays, or queue depth.
- Review account-level metrics weekly and after major launches.
- Keep a runbook for pausing sends when metrics cross red lines.
Continue reading
Related guides to help you ship production-ready transactional email.
Sending Email with Node.js
Install @mailsurge/node and send your first message.
Read guide
For implementation details, open the API docs and pair this checklist with the language quickstart guides.
Ready to send your first email?
Verify a domain, create an API key, and call POST /api/v1/message from your stack.