I’m an email administrator. Something that’s been frustrating for me is how often third-party platforms get email authentication wrong.

By “platform” I generally mean something that’s probably going to send email, but isn’t an email provider outright. Things like:

  • mailing list software
  • marketing platforms
  • sales platforms
  • ticket and issue tracking systems
  • customer relationship management systems

At some point, all of these platforms will want to send an email using the customer’s domain name. In order to not wind up in spam boxes, they’ll ask the customer to take steps to authenticate their platform for emailing, and odds are they’ll get some part of how authentication works wrong.

I’m hoping this series of blog posts will straight a few things up and help these platforms get email authentication correct.