How Email Gets Delivered (End-to-End Flow)
Follow the full, end-to-end journey of a single email. We'll chart the path from the moment you hit "Send," through the MTA relays, the DNS lookups for the MX record, and the final retrieval by the user's IMAP or POP3 client.
Questions about How Email Gets Delivered (End-to-End Flow)
What are the main steps in email delivery?
What systems handle each step (client → MTA → DNS → receiving MTA)?
How do retries work when a message can’t be delivered?
What is queue management?
How do large senders distribute traffic across IPs?
How does load balancing work in MTAs?
What happens if DNS lookup fails?
What is a delivery delay?
What is connection throttling?
What is backscatter and why is it a problem?