Getting started with MailOut

You can follow this guide to get started with STACKIT MailOut. You learn how to create a Sending Domain as well as an Authorized Sender, validating your Sending Domain with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC DNS records, so that you are able to send email messages.

Prerequisites

• You have a STACKIT customer account: Create a customer Account
• You have a STACKIT user account: Create a user account
• You have a STACKIT project: Create a project
• You have access to your domain host’s DNS service or you are able to use the STACKIT DNS using a free STACKIT subdomain.

Steps

1. Create a sending domain
2. Validate your sending domain
3. Setup an authorized sender
4. Send an email message

Create a sending domain

At first you need to create a sending domain, you want to send email messages from:

1. Log in to the STACKIT Portal.
2. On the left click on Messaging/MailOut and on the new pane on Create Sending Domains.
3. On the new pane, enter your sending domain URL.
4. Click on Create to create your sending domain.

After you created the sending domain, it will remain in state Validating… until you have validated it.

Validate your sending domain

1. In the sending domain overview, click on the sending domain you want to validate.

2. In the menu on the left, click the DNS Configuration entry.

3. On the new pane, you see a list of DNS records that must be transferred to the DNS service of your domain hoster.

   You can either transfer the information manually OR by downloading the created zone file and uploading it at the destination DNS service.

   Use the correct DNS record type TXT and CNAME. Mandatory DNS records are DKIM, SPF and DMARC. Return path and MX records are optional.

4. After you added the DNS records to the DNS service, click Validate DNS records

Once validated correctly, you must be able to see a valid state for the DNS records in the overview of the sending domain. The overall state of your sending domain will turn from state “Validating” to “Active”.

The DNS entries are regularly checked for validity and accuracy. Don’t delete or alter the entries after the initial validation, as submitted emails will be rejected if the entries are no longer correct.

Setup an authorized sender

To be able to ingress email messages using the SMTP endpoint, you need to create an authorized sender.

1. In the sending domain overview, click on the sending domain you want to create an Authorized Sender for.
2. In the menu on the left, click the Authorized Sender entry.
3. On the new pane on Create Authorized Sender.
4. In the modal dialog, enter a description for your Authorized Sender.
5. After you clicked “Create”, you will see all information for your Authorized Sender like username, password and SMTP endpoint. Please note, that the password cannot be retrieved later.

Send an email message

That’s it! You can now use your preferred email program and configure it with the login credentials provided above, or use a simple script to send a test email using the SMTP test tool Swiss Army Knife for SMTP (Swaks).

Use a service like aboutmy.email to generate a temporary testing address.

The following shell script can be used to send an email with STACKIT MailOut:

SERVER="<your-smtp-endpoint>" \
PORT=25 \
SMTP_USERNAME="<your-username>" \
SMTP_PASSWORD="<your-password>" \
SENDER="noreply@<your-domain>" \
RECIPIENT="<recipient>@aboutmy.email" \
swaks \
--to $RECIPIENT \
--from $SENDER \
--server $SERVER \
--port $PORT \
--auth plain \
--auth-user $SMTP_USERNAME \
--auth-password $SMTP_PASSWORD \
--tls