A web agency email checklist is the boring list you run on every client site: NS access, alias sheet, exclusive MX, HOLD, form SMTP in env, two-direction probe, leftover MX gone, offboard packet ready. Skip one and you inherit a Friday. MailerZ is the hop. Quote real plans. No inboxing percentage in the launch deck.
Quick answer for web agency email checklist
Websites print addresses and forms. Both need a hop that exists.
RFC 5321 and exclusive MX are the inbound half.
Forms need paid SMTP and a receivable From.
HOLD unknown. Catch-all is not an agency default.
Leftover builder MX is the usual miss.
Start free as staff training, then Agency for the book.
Authoritative mail transport is defined in IETF RFC 5321 — Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Product path: features, migration planner, and delivery recovery.
User problem and decision criteria
Decision criteria: access, printed strings, forms, who staffs, leftover debt.
Heroics without a sheet are how restaurants lose reservations.
If the client wants Workspace, say so and price a suite or decline.
Secrets in WP are an item, not a footnote.
No SOC 2 sticker on the checklist.
No dual MX backup culture.
Caps if many sites send.
Governance of who edits DNS.
Technical mail flow
Kickoff access → sheet → map → TTL → exclusive MX → form env → probes → handoff.
Incidents use the missing-mail runbook.
Offboard uses the packet.
Do not invent a fourth sequence.
Step-by-step setup / decision path
- NS proof and registrar owner.
- Printed aliases sheet.
- Map + HOLD.
- Exclusive MX. Delete leftovers.
- Form SMTP from dashboard if needed.
- Two-direction probe.
- Handoff note.
- Calendar leftover-MX recheck in a week.
Classify the next failure before a second DNS edit.
HOLD unknown unless you wrote a FORWARD reason.
Quote live pricing before promising alias counts.
Failure modes and proof
No NS access: fiction records.
Printed before map.
Builder MX leftover.
Gmail password in WP.
Free send-as.
Catch-all default.
Self-send QA.
Dual MX.
No handoff.
List on SMTP.
Inboxing slide.
Shared staff login.
MailerZ workflow and product boundary
MailerZ is custom-domain aliasing and forwarding with optional paid send-as. Secuno LLC operates mailerz.net. The app is mail.mailerz.net. Not Workspace, not IMAP, not an open relay, not a campaign ESP.
Envelope SRS only. Header From, Subject, Date, Message-ID, body, and MIME stay intact. Exclusive MX. Hold unknown on Free. Copy SMTP host, port, and TLS or STARTTLS from the dashboard when you send.
Free: one domain, ten aliases, one seat, fourteen-day store, send-as disabled, SMTP and API disabled. Solo forty dollars a year, twenty-five aliases, ninety-day store, 2,500 outgoing, 20 send-as per hour. Starter eight or eighty. Business nineteen or one hundred ninety. Agency thirty-nine or three hundred ninety. Quote pricing. No SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, SLA, or inboxing percentage.
Cost, alternatives, and trade-offs
A checklist hour is cheaper than a reservation outage.
Rehearsal on Free is training.
Agency plan is the book cost.
Leftover MX is brand cost.
Secrets in git are breach cost.
Junk retainers from FORWARD.
No fake SLA.
Handoff prevents unpaid forever.
Operational depth
Put this checklist in onboarding. Not in a wiki nobody opens.
New hires cut a rehearsal domain first.
Serial MX publishes.
Rate-limit every form.
Weekly HOLD glance on new sites.
Quote plans before promising alias counts.
Keep ESP off client reply SMTP.
Revoke on offboard.
Screenshot every MX.
No invented ports.
Probe Message-IDs in the launch channel.
Review the checklist quarterly.
Field notes for a web agency email checklist
The checklist fails when it lives in a Notion page nobody opens on launch day. Print it as a launch-channel template with empty fields: NS proof, alias sheet link, MX screenshot before, MX screenshot after, form SMTP yes/no, inbound probe Message-ID, reply probe Message-ID, leftover MX deleted yes/no, handoff owner. If a field is blank, the site is not launched. Social pressure beats a wiki.
New hires should cut a rehearsal domain on Free before they touch a restaurant or a clinic. Pride about “simple MX” is how a builder leftover survives. The rehearsal teaches two resolvers, exclusive MX, HOLD, and a third-mailbox probe. That motion is the product you sell, not a logo on a slide.
Serial MX publishes keep history readable. Three brands in one hour produce a pile of 550s you cannot attribute. Staff can prep maps in parallel. Production cuts should be far enough apart that you can name which hop belongs to which zone. If a client demands same-day multi-domain, add people and still publish one exclusive set at a time.
Every contact form is an outbound identity. If the form sends as hello@ and MX is not exclusive, replies die or split. Paid SMTP comes from the dashboard. Do not invent 587 or 465 as MailerZ facts. Do not leave a Gmail App Password in a WordPress plugin. Rate-limit the form so a bot cannot burn Solo’s hourly send-as cap and look like abuse.
HOLD unknown is the agency default. Catch-all FORWARD as a “we might miss a lead” line item becomes a junk retainer. Review held mail in week one of a new site. Create named aliases for real typos you will staff. Leave dictionary guesses held. Write that policy in the SOW so sales cannot waive it in a hallway.
Leftover MX is the usual Friday. Website builders inject Google or their own MX. A “free email” checkbox from two years ago still answers. Two public resolvers that show two owners is a hard stop. Demoting priority is not deletion. Screenshot the old set into the ticket before you type a new row.
Quote plan limits before you promise twenty department aliases on Free. Free is one domain, ten aliases, HOLD, no send-as. Solo is forty dollars a year and twenty-five aliases. Agency exists for books of domains. Check pricing the day you quote. Do not scrape this paragraph in 2028 as a price list.
Handoff is part of done. The client folder gets the sheet, both MX pictures, probe IDs, who edits NS, and where SMTP lives. Without that packet you remain on-call for a site you no longer invoice. Offboarding later is the reverse: revoke secrets, confirm public MX is no longer you if you exited, date the store clock.
Self-send QA is how agencies ship a lie. Gmail and Outlook can short-circuit. Use a third mailbox at a different provider. Open original. Confirm Header From is the customer on inbound and the alias on outbound. Put those Message-IDs in the launch channel. That is the review, not a star rating.
Do not put an inboxing percentage on a launch deck. Filters live at Gmail and Outlook. MailerZ will not publish a rate. A hop 250 plus a junk folder is a filter ticket, not a failed MX. Teach clients that sentence in kickoff so they do not demand a badge you cannot own.
Secrets belong in a password manager and platform env, not Slack. Rotate SMTP when staff leave. Staging sites must not use production SMTP. A preview deploy that mails real customers is an incident you scheduled.
Calendar a leftover-MX recheck one week after cut. Caches and forgotten registrar rows come back. Two resolvers again. If they disagree, you are in TTL or a ghost zone. Do not add the old host “temporarily.”
If the client wants Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 as a store, say so and price a suite project or decline. This checklist is a hop around inboxes people already have. Dual-publishing MailerZ MX next to Google MX is leftover MX with a consulting invoice.
Review the checklist quarterly. DNS UIs change. The gates do not: access, sheet, map, exclusive MX, HOLD, forms, probe, handoff. That sentence is how you stay profitable on email without heroics.
When a restaurant loses reservations, the postmortem is almost always skipped leftover MX, a missing alias, or a form that sent as an address nobody receives. The checklist exists so those three cannot hide. Run it even when you are tired. Especially then.
Worked scenarios on the agency checklist
A bakery site launches Friday. The footer prints hello@ and orders@. The form sends as hello@. The builder still has MX at priority 10. You ran aliases in MailerZ but only added MX, you did not delete. Saturday half the orders arrive. History is empty for the missing half. Two resolvers show two owners. The checklist item you skipped was leftover delete. The fix is delete, wait what TTL remains, probe from a third mailbox, then apologize with a class sentence: leftover MX, not a down MailerZ. Do not add catch-all FORWARD to “catch the rest.” The rest is at the builder.
A clinic wants ten department aliases on Free. You cannot. Free is ten aliases. Quote Solo or Starter from the live pricing page. If you promised ten in a proposal, you eat the upgrade or you eat the relationship. The checklist item is quote limits before the footer is designed. Designers love nouns. Nouns are rows. Rows have limits.
A WordPress contact form uses a Gmail App Password and From: clinic@. Replies never come back because MX is MailerZ and Gmail SMTP is a different identity. Two-direction probe fails on the reply. Replace with paid MailerZ SMTP from the dashboard in env. Rate-limit the form. Staging uses a sink. The checklist item is form SMTP yes, dashboard values, receivable From.
A junior publishes three client MX sets in twenty minutes. Tickets blur. One leftover survives. The postmortem rule is serial cuts. Prep parallel. Publish one exclusive set. Read history. Then the next zone. Staff the afternoon accordingly. Heroics are not a checklist.
Offboard a tourism site. You delete MailerZ in the app but their public MX still names you. You remain the inbound owner unpaid. The checklist item is confirm public MX after revoke. Screenshot. Date the store clock. Tell them WordPress still has the old SMTP secret. Rotate is their job after you hand the packet. Unrevoked AUTH is your incident if you still accept it.
A client asks for an inboxing percentage on the launch deck. You refuse. You offer hop 250 and exclusive MX as the two numbers you can own. You record the probe folder as observation. If they need a suite logo, you price Workspace separately or decline. The checklist does not include a seed-list slide.
HOLD review in week one shows career@ as a typo of careers@. You create the named typo because the job board printed it. You do not enable FORWARD. Next week’s held list is scanners. You stop living in it. That is the checklist working.
NS access never arrives. You write instructions. You do not cut. You do not edit the unused registrar zone. You price a documentation-only engagement. The checklist starts with NS proof. Without it you are not an operator.
Shared staff MailerZ password. A contractor leaves. Nobody rotates. Their laptop still has SMTP for three brands. The checklist item is seats and a password manager. Prefer plan seats over a shared login. Rotate on leave. This is the same family as threat-model offboard.
Quarterly review finds the checklist wiki outdated and the launch template still used. Keep the template. Delete the wiki paragraph that told people to keep Google MX at 20. That sentence causes leftover MX. The gates remain: access, sheet, exclusive MX, HOLD, forms, probe, handoff.
A restaurant wants the same SMTP for a weekly newsletter. You split the SOW. ESP for the list. MailerZ for aliases and form receipts. Caps and filters are why. CAN-SPAM lives on the list path. Reply SMTP is not a preference center.
New hire rehearsal: Free domain, named aliases, exclusive MX, fake local-part holds, real alias arrives in a third mailbox, form loop if they will ship forms. They do not touch a paying client until those Message-IDs exist. That is how the checklist becomes culture instead of a PDF.
Incident Friday uses the missing-mail runbook, not a new religion. The checklist is how you avoid the Friday. The runbook is how you classify it. Do not invent a third sequence in Slack. Point at troubleshooting and delivery recovery for artifacts.
If leadership wants SOC 2 in the agency deck because a hospital is the lead, you send security and you do not mint a badge. The checklist is operational. It is not a certification. Honesty is how you keep the hospital or how you lose it cleanly.
Practice and anti-patterns for the agency checklist
Anti-pattern: launch message without two-resolver screenshots. The channel should refuse the message. Social rules beat wikis. If someone ships anyway, the postmortem class is leftover MX or ghost zone until proven otherwise.
Anti-pattern: Google MX at priority 20 as agency folklore. Teach it once. Delete the sentence from every deck. Priority is not HA across vendors. Exclusive MailerZ values from the dashboard. Demote is not delete.
Anti-pattern: Gmail App Password in WordPress because it worked on a laptop. It is not MailerZ send-as. Replies and identity split. Dashboard SMTP in env. Rate-limit. Staging sink. Two-direction probe or the form is not launched.
Anti-pattern: catch-all FORWARD as a default in every SOW. It becomes a junk retainer. HOLD in the SOW. Named typos only when you will staff them. Week-one held review, then monthly.
Anti-pattern: three MX cuts in twenty minutes. History blurs. Serial publish. Prep maps in parallel. Production is one exclusive set at a time. Staff the afternoon if the client wants same-day multiplicity.
Anti-pattern: shared MailerZ password for the whole studio. Offboard fails. Prefer seats. Password manager. Rotate SMTP when people leave. Zone name in every ticket so remaps cannot jump brands.
Anti-pattern: inboxing slide. Refuse. Offer hop 250 and exclusive MX. Folder is observation. MailerZ does not publish a rate. Filters live at Gmail and Outlook.
Anti-pattern: SOC 2 in the hospital deck. Send /security. Do not mint a badge. The checklist is operational. Certification is a different product conversation.
Anti-pattern: unpaid leftover MX after you “deleted the domain in the app.” Confirm public MX. Date the store. Tell them about WordPress secrets. Courtesy MX is an incident with your hostname on it.
Anti-pattern: newsletter on reply SMTP. Split ESP versus MailerZ. Caps and filters. Preference centers are not hop features.
Practice: Free rehearsal for every new hire. Three aliases, exclusive MX, fake holds, real arrives, form loop if they ship forms. Message-IDs before a paying zone.
Practice: leftover-MX recheck one week after cut. Caches and helpful teammates re-add backup Google. Two resolvers again.
Practice: quarterly checklist review. DNS UIs change. Gates do not: access, sheet, map, exclusive MX, HOLD, forms, probe, handoff.
Practice: incident Friday uses the missing-mail runbook and delivery recovery, not a new Slack religion. Classify leftover, HOLD, 5xx, or folder. One change. Re-probe.
Practice: quote live /pricing the day you promise alias counts. Free is ten. Solo twenty-five. Agency exists. Do not scrape this article as a 2028 price list.
Practice: print the launch template with empty fields. Blank field means not launched. That is the whole culture.
Operator closeout for the web agency email checklist
If you only remember seven fields, remember these: NS proof, alias sheet, MX before, MX after, form SMTP path, inbound probe id, reply probe id. A blank field is a not-launched site. That rule survives tired Fridays and new hires who think MX is a checkbox in a builder.
MailerZ remains a hop. Secuno LLC. mailerz.net. App mail.mailerz.net. Envelope SRS. Headers intact. Not IMAP. Not an open relay. Unauthorized send is 550 5.7.1. Copy SMTP from the dashboard when paid. Do not invent 587 or 465 as product facts.
Free: one domain, ten aliases, one seat, fourteen-day store, send-as disabled, HOLD unknown. Solo forty dollars a year, twenty-five aliases, ninety-day store, 2,500 outgoing, 20 send-as per hour. Starter eight or eighty. Business nineteen or one hundred ninety. Agency thirty-nine or three hundred ninety. Quote /pricing the day you promise a count.
HOLD is how you keep destination inboxes staffable across a book of sites. FORWARD as a personality is how you sell a junk retainer you will hate in quarter two. Named typos only. Scanners stay held. Write it in the SOW so sales cannot waive it in a hallway between mockups.
Leftover MX is still the usual outage class. Two public resolvers. Delete, do not demote. Builder free-email leftovers are not folklore; they are rows. Confirm public MX after you think you deleted the domain in the app. Unpaid leftover MX is you operating inbound after the invoice stopped.
Two-direction probes are how forms stop being dead letters. From must be a mapped alias. Rate-limit. Staging sink. Secrets in a password manager. Rotate when people leave. Shared studio passwords are how three brands keep sending after a freelancer exits.
Do not publish an inboxing percentage. Do not mint SOC 2. Send /security for questionnaires. Teach hop 250 versus folder in kickoff. Filters live at Gmail and Outlook. Seed-list slides are not a launch artifact.
Serial cuts keep history attributable. Prep maps in parallel. Publish one exclusive set. Read the hop. Then the next zone. Three brands in twenty minutes is how a leftover survives a standup that said done.
Handoff packets are part of done: sheet, pictures, probe ids, NS owner, SMTP location. Offboard is the reverse plus a store clock date. Incident Friday uses the missing-mail runbook and delivery recovery, not a new Slack religion.
Rehearse on Free. Review the template quarterly. The gates do not change when a DNS UI does. Access, sheet, exclusive MX, HOLD, forms, probe, handoff. Run the list. Then stop inventing.
Handoff memo for the next operator
Agencies lose weeks when the person who built the mailbox leaves and the replacement inherits a folder of screenshots. Write a one-page handoff that a stranger can use on a Sunday. Include registrar login location, DNS host if different, MailerZ workspace URL, alias list, catch-all policy, send-as identities, and the last successful send-as proof. Add the client contact who can approve a TXT change and the SLA you promised for a mailbox outage. Store the memo in the same ticket system you use for renewals so it does not live only in a personal drive.
The memo should also name the failure modes you already survived. If a prior MX collision blocked a campaign, write that. If a client once pasted a TXT into the hostname field, write that. Future you will thank present you when the same registrar UI tricks the next junior. Keep the memo short enough to read in five minutes and precise enough that nobody has to guess which zone file is authoritative.
When you rotate staff, walk the new operator through one live change: add a disposable alias, send a test, delete the alias. That exercise proves they can reach the dashboard and the DNS host. Do not consider a handoff complete until that loop succeeds. Paper alone is not proof.
If you use MailerZ across many clients, keep the handoff format identical so a new hire can scan ten memos in an hour. Consistency beats clever one-off notes. Link the memo from the client retainer so legal and ops share the same source of truth.
FAQ
- What is the safest way to handle web agency email checklist?
- Run NS, sheet, map, exclusive MX, HOLD, form SMTP if any, two-direction probe, leftover delete, handoff note. Serial production cuts. Dashboard values only.
- Does this require a new mailbox?
- No. MailerZ is not IMAP. Keep Gmail or Outlook unless you need a suite for other reasons.
- Will it work with Gmail or Outlook?
- Yes as destinations. Self-send is not proof. Use a third mailbox and open original.
- What DNS records are involved?
- Exclusive MX, verification TXT, one SPF if you send-as. Leftover MX is a hard stop. Dashboard values only for sending.
- What should I test before production?
- A uniquely titled probe from an unrelated provider to each public alias. Confirm Header From and hop history.
Key takeaways
- NS, sheet, exclusive MX, HOLD, forms, probe, handoff.
- Serial cuts.
- Dashboard SMTP only.
- No catch-all default.
- No dual MX.
- Quote limits.
- Rehearse on Free.
- Message-IDs in launch chat.
Conclusion
Agencies stay profitable on email by refusing to improvise. Run the list. Then stop.
Start free, train the motion, then put client zones through the same gates.