Product update: Log details in the control panel and default encrypted email delivery

We’ve been busy at Mailgun recently working on some new features that our customers have been asking for. Today, we’d like to share two of them. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks and months.

Log details in the Control Panel

The first new feature is detailed log messages in the Mailgun control panel. Since rolling out our Events API in August, this API has proved to be one of the most popular ways of getting granular data back about emails. Many users still like to use the Control Panel, however, for a quick snapshot of messages. Until recently, the control panel has only given very limited information about an email. This included things like recipient, subject and sender. Now, you can click on any email in the Logs tab of the Control Panel and receive the full JSON object of the event, with the exact same data available through the API.

Emails sent encrypted via TLS by default

We recently blogged about how we used connection pooling to double our sending speed. One of the side benefits of our new architecture is that we can offer what is called “opportunistic TLS”. This means that when Mailgun tries to establish a connection with a recipient ESP, we will automatically try to establish a TLS connection. If we can establish the connection and the certificate passes, we will deliver the email encrypted via TLS. If we either cannot establish a TLS connection or the certificate does not pass, only then will we fall back to plain text delivery. Since the largest ESPs like Gmail and Yahoo support TLS connections, this effectively means that already a significant portion of Mailgun traffic is delivered encrypted over TLS. As more ESPs support TLS encryption, this percentage will grow.

We are also working on adding support for our users to mandate TLS delivery of their emails. This would mean that you could tell Mailgun not to deliver a message if a TLS connection could not be established. Most of Mailgun customers are already benefiting from default TLS delivery and we are completing our migration to the new architecture in the coming weeks at which point all Mailgun customers will benefit.

Stay tuned for more!

The Mailgunners