FAQ

Why is this free? Will it stay free?

It's free now because the relay needs a diverse, honest sender base to build IP reputation before we can responsibly charge anyone. Once the pool is warm and the first billing system is wired, paid tiers will start at around $10–15 per month per PDS operator. There will always be a generous free tier for low-volume senders.

If you enroll today, you are not signing up for a future invoice. We will announce pricing changes with at least 30 days' notice, and you can export your reputation or leave at any time.

How can I trust this?

You don't have to trust us blindly. The relay source code is open source (AGPL-3.0-or-later), the Osprey reputation rules are published, and the atproto labeler feed is public. You — or your favorite LLM — can audit exactly how deliverability decisions are made.

On privacy: the relay sees message metadata (sender, recipient, timestamp, size) but never the raw message body. That is the same trust model as Postmark, Mailgun, or Amazon SES, except here the code is open and the operator is a small LLC instead of a public company.

Why not use a trusted commercial relay?

Commercial relays work well, but your domain reputation lives inside their business. If you switch providers, you start from zero. Atmosphere Mail is designed so your reputation stays with you: your DID, your domain, your attestation record. If you ever want to run your own relay, the code and the reputation layer come with you.

The long-term goal is a federation of cooperative relays that share a reputation blocklist indexed through atproto. One relay is live today; the architecture is built for many.

Will my mail reach the inbox?

Maybe not on day one. Gmail treats mail from a new IP as suspicious regardless of authentication cleanliness. The relay protects the shared pool with warming tier caps: 5 emails per hour for the first week, graduating as your domain builds reputation. Expect some messages to land in spam initially. The fix is slow, engaged sending — not better DNS records.

We run pool-level feedback loops with Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo so complaints route back to the offending member, not the whole cooperative. That is how shared reputation stays shared instead of collective punishment.

What if I want to leave?

Your domain reputation is yours. The DKIM keys are published in your DNS, the attestation record lives on your PDS, and the verified-mail-operator label is signed against your DID. If you graduate to self-hosted delivery, those signals travel with you. If you want your member record deleted, email postmaster@atmos.email and we will remove it within 14 days.

What can I send through this relay?

Transactional and operational mail from your own domain: verification codes, password resets, notifications, personal correspondence. Unsolicited bulk mail, scraped lists, and relaying for third parties will get you suspended quickly. See the Acceptable Use Policy for the full list.

Still have questions? Reach the operator at @scottlanoue.com or postmaster@atmos.email.