
RFC 6532 allows the use of UTF-8 (another way to store international text) in a mail header section.RFC 5890 provides support for international domain names in the Domain Name System (DNS).RFC 2047 provides support for international names and subject lines, in the email header.To handle special characters, like €, you need to take 3 technical documents (also called RFC) into account: For example, international (non-US) characters handling was not part of the initial specification. Translate email into a proper data formatĮmail is an old format, the "created before Star Wars" kind of old, and it has accumulated a few warts over the decades. There are many SDK for all the more popular programming languages around there.Ģ. Their API is great and the documentation stellar. Mailgun focuses more on developer and API.Sendgrid also position itself as a marketing and transactional email platform.It focuses on marketing and transactional emails. Mandrill had a first mover advantage and remains popular.Postmark focuses deliverability and reliability.Here are the major players in this space: In our era of cloud and SaaS, it's more convenient to use a hosted email service that does the dirty email work for you. Note that sending a lot of emails without being blacklisted is an art in itself and better left to the specialists.Īlso note that the popularity of setting up one's own email server is dwindling. If you are determined to go down that path, Python has a lovely module in its standard library to get you started.

If your needs does not imply compatibility with the gazillions emails clients out there, that is. In the end, your server might better fit your needs. That path will be long and winding, but you will learn a lot on the way. You can get the emails from it through EWS instead of more old-fashioned POP3 or IMAP. Nowadays, you can even get Microsoft to host it for you, for a fee. On Microsoft side, the ubiquitous Exchange.According to this article about email server market share, Exim and Postfix together represent 80% of all email servers. It has the reputation to "just work", with minimal problems.

It is the most popular SMTP server, and gaining in popularity a bit faster than the second, Postfix.
