FAQ

Why is this free? Will it stay free?

It's free during alpha because the relay needs a diverse, honest sender base to build IP reputation before charging anyone makes sense. Once the pool is warm and the billing system is wired, paid tiers will land. The shape is a flat-rate personal tier around $10–15 per month, higher-volume tiers for businesses and agencies, and a self-host path that stays free for operators who run their own relay.

Full pricing publishes with the billing system, not before. Enrolling today is not signing up for a future invoice: pricing changes get at least 30 days' notice, and you can export your reputation or leave at any time.

How can I trust this?

The relay source is open (AGPL-3.0-or-later), the Osprey reputation rules are published, and the atproto labeler feed is public. You can read the code that decides whether a message sends.

The relay processes message bodies and addressing information to deliver mail. Inbox also stores mailbox content. Read how Inbox stores your mail for details about PDS storage, Comail's mailbox copy and recovery.

Why not use a trusted commercial relay?

Commercial relays work well, but your domain reputation lives inside their business. Switching providers means starting over. comail is built 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, and 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 how clean the authentication is. The relay protects the shared pool with warming tier caps: 2 per hour and 10 per day for the first week, then 10 per hour and 50 per day through day 14. Expect some messages to land in spam initially. The fix is slow, engaged sending, not better DNS records.

Pool-level feedback loops with Gmail, Microsoft, and Yahoo route complaints back to the offending member instead of the whole cooperative. That's how shared reputation stays shared.

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. To delete your member record, email postmaster@atmos.email and we'll 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.