How sending works
Who sends what to whom through Mailato, and the rules every message follows.
Who sends
Organisations will send through Mailato from their own apps; the first planned is a non-profit.
Each organisation will send from its own domain, verified once with DKIM and SPF (the two standard checks that prove mail really comes from that domain), so its mail goes out as itself: Mailato is only the pipe, and no organisation sends from a Mailato address.
What kinds of email
Personal messages, one person at a time. The first organisation plans to send:
- Follow-ups after a gift.
- Event invitations.
- Administrative notices, such as a pledge reminder.
- Occasional fundraising appeals.
Who receives it
People who already have a relationship with the sending organisation, such as donors, volunteers and members. Each organisation keeps its own contacts in its own app; Mailato holds no mailing lists. The terms forbid bought, rented or borrowed lists.
How consent is enforced
Every send carries the list of contact statuses allowed to receive it, such as "subscribed". The Mailer refuses any other recipient before anything is sent. The organisation decides which statuses each kind of message allows, and the terms require that those people agreed or that the law lets the organisation write to them.
How people unsubscribe
Every email carries an unsubscribe link and the standard one-click unsubscribe headers, so mail apps can offer their own unsubscribe button. Both go to the sending organisation's own preferences page. The Mailer refuses to send a design that has no unsubscribe link. More on the unsubscribe page.
Bounces and complaints
Today the Mailer itself does not process bounces or complaints. Before Mailato sends any real mail:
- The email provider's own suppression list will be turned on for bounces and complaints, so delivery to those addresses stops there.
- Bounce and complaint notices will go to a mailbox a person reads.
- The first organisation's app is planned to mark those contacts and stop writing to them.
- Bounce and complaint rates will be watched, because a spike can pause sending for everyone.
No duplicates
Each message has one key. Sending the same key again is answered "already sent". If the email provider's answer is unclear, the message is marked "uncertain" and a person decides; it is never sent again automatically.
Expected volume
Not stated yet. It will be published here once the first organisation confirms it, before Mailato sends any real mail.
For AI agents
The machine-readable contract for this site is at https://www.mailato.com/manifest.jsonld (JSON-LD, contract version 1.0.0). This section is the same contract as readable text, generated from the same source, for tools that cannot read the page header.
Mailato sends email for organisations: follow-ups, invitations and notices, one person at a time. Each message goes out at most once, only to the contacts that send allows, and always with an unsubscribe link. Each organisation will send from its own domain. This site describes the service; it has no accounts and nothing on it is withheld from any reader.
Mailato is not sending email yet. Its sending engine, the Mailer (version 1.0.0), is built and tested and has not yet sent real mail. These pages say what it does today and what is planned, and they say which is which.
Actions (address them by identifier)
- mailato.read-contract —
GET /manifest.jsonld— Fetch this contract as JSON-LD without parsing HTML. It is complete: reading it requires no identification. - mailato.unsubscribe —
GET /unsubscribe/— To stop email from an organisation that sends through Mailato, use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email it sent. The link goes to that organisation's own preference page; one-click unsubscribe in mail apps uses the same link. Mailato does not hold mailing lists, so this site cannot unsubscribe anyone by itself. The page at the target explains this for a person. - mailato.identify —
POST /identify · GET /identify{?agent,vendor,operator,principal,purpose}— OPTIONAL. Say who you are. It is recorded as claimed and never verified, and it grants nothing: there is nothing on this site to unlock. Send JSON {agent, vendor?, operator?, principal?, purpose?, contact?} by POST, or use the GET form. If you act for a person, name them in principal; you (the actor) and they (the principal) are recorded separately. contact is POST-only because URLs leak into logs.
Tiers
- mailato.tier.anonymous — Any reader. Receives this complete contract. Nothing is withheld.
- mailato.tier.identified — Said who it is through mailato.identify. Recorded as claimed. No extra description, no privileges.
- mailato.tier.intermediated — An agent acting for a named person (principal). The actor and the principal are recorded separately and never merged. No extra access.
Policy
- description: Everything here is public. Identification is optional and buys nothing.
- limits: An identification request body is capped at 4096 bytes; each field at 200 characters. No per-address rate limit is promised.
- robots: Crawling is allowed. There is deliberately no robots.txt (the path returns 404): nothing is disallowed.
- identityAssurance: Claimed identities are never verified.
- records: For each request this site records the time, the path, the method, the response status, the user-agent string as sent, and anything sent to mailato.identify. It records no IP address, no location of any kind (not even a country), and sets no cookies.
This is a website of plain pages with ordinary links; it works without JavaScript. Address actions by identifier, not by name: names may change within a version, identifiers do not.
The contract, exactly
{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebSite","name":"Mailato","identifier":"mailato.site","url":"https://www.mailato.com/","version":"1.0.0","description":"Mailato sends email for organisations: follow-ups, invitations and notices, one person at a time. Each message goes out at most once, only to the contacts that send allows, and always with an unsubscribe link. Each organisation will send from its own domain. This site describes the service; it has no accounts and nothing on it is withheld from any reader.","about":"Mailato is not sending email yet. Its sending engine, the Mailer (version 1.0.0), is built and tested and has not yet sent real mail. These pages say what it does today and what is planned, and they say which is which.","availableAction":[{"@type":"Action","identifier":"mailato.read-contract","name":"read-contract","description":"Fetch this contract as JSON-LD without parsing HTML. It is complete: reading it requires no identification.","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"/manifest.jsonld","httpMethod":"GET"}},{"@type":"Action","identifier":"mailato.unsubscribe","name":"unsubscribe","description":"To stop email from an organisation that sends through Mailato, use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email it sent. The link goes to that organisation's own preference page; one-click unsubscribe in mail apps uses the same link. Mailato does not hold mailing lists, so this site cannot unsubscribe anyone by itself. The page at the target explains this for a person.","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"/unsubscribe/","httpMethod":"GET"}},{"@type":"Action","identifier":"mailato.identify","name":"identify","description":"OPTIONAL. Say who you are. It is recorded as claimed and never verified, and it grants nothing: there is nothing on this site to unlock. Send JSON {agent, vendor?, operator?, principal?, purpose?, contact?} by POST, or use the GET form. If you act for a person, name them in principal; you (the actor) and they (the principal) are recorded separately. contact is POST-only because URLs leak into logs.","target":[{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"/identify","httpMethod":"POST","encodingType":"application/json"},{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"/identify{?agent,vendor,operator,principal,purpose}","httpMethod":"GET"}]}],"tiers":[{"identifier":"mailato.tier.anonymous","description":"Any reader. Receives this complete contract. Nothing is withheld."},{"identifier":"mailato.tier.identified","description":"Said who it is through mailato.identify. Recorded as claimed. No extra description, no privileges."},{"identifier":"mailato.tier.intermediated","description":"An agent acting for a named person (principal). The actor and the principal are recorded separately and never merged. No extra access."}],"interactionPolicy":{"description":"Everything here is public. Identification is optional and buys nothing.","limits":"An identification request body is capped at 4096 bytes; each field at 200 characters. No per-address rate limit is promised.","robots":"Crawling is allowed. There is deliberately no robots.txt (the path returns 404): nothing is disallowed.","identityAssurance":"Claimed identities are never verified.","records":"For each request this site records the time, the path, the method, the response status, the user-agent string as sent, and anything sent to mailato.identify. It records no IP address, no location of any kind (not even a country), and sets no cookies."},"howToOperate":"This is a website of plain pages with ordinary links; it works without JavaScript. Address actions by identifier, not by name: names may change within a version, identifiers do not."}