custom email

setup email in 2019

Email is annoyingly hard, if you want it to be reliable

I've setup mine to work with Mailgun and Firebase (for transactional emails)

Receiving

This is easy

MX    seankhliao.com    mxa.mailgun.org
MX    seankhliao.com    mxb.mailgun.org

Sending

This is complicated to do safely and securely

SPF

Sender Policy Framework

Identifies which mail servers are allowed to send email from the domain

TXT     seankhliao.com          v=spf1 include:_spf.firebasemail.com include:mailgun.org ~all

DKIM

Domain Keys Identied Mail

Email hashes are signed and verified with public-private keys, public keys identified by the DKIM-Signature header, ...; s=selector; d=example.com corresonds to the key at selector._domainkey.example.com

CNAME   firebase1._domainkey    mail-seankhliao-com.dkim1._domainkey.firebasemail.com
CNAME   firebase2._domainkey    mail-seankhliao-com.dkim2._domainkey.firebasemail.com
TXT     smtp._domainkey         v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=...

DMARC

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance

Specifies the policies (monitor, quarantine spam, reject) that should be applied when verifying against SPF and DKIM

Set another TXT some.doman._report._dmarc v=DMARC1 if you want to receive reports for somae.domain at antoher domain

TXT     _dmarc                  v=DMARC1; p=reject; adkim=r; aspf=r; ruf=mailto:...; rua=mailto:...; fo=1; ri=86400; pct=100; rf=afrf;