Postmark is a transactional email delivery service focused exclusively on fast, reliable delivery of application-generated emails. Unlike platforms that handle both marketing and transactional email, Postmark specializes in time-sensitive messages like password resets, order confirmations, and account notifications. The platform boasts industry-leading delivery speeds, with most emails arriving in inboxes within seconds. Postmark maintains strict sending policies to protect sender reputation across its shared IP pools, resulting in consistently high inbox placement rates. The service also provides inbound email processing and message streams for organizing different email types.
Postmark outages, while rare due to the platform's focused architecture, typically involve SMTP relay infrastructure issues, API gateway failures, or delivery pipeline congestion during unusual volume spikes. Inbound email processing can fail independently from outbound delivery. Template rendering errors occasionally affect specific message formats. Because Postmark maintains strict sender reputation standards, any infrastructure issue that could affect delivery reputation is treated with high urgency, often resulting in proactive capacity adjustments before failures occur.
When Postmark goes down, transactional emails stop reaching inboxes — password resets fail, order confirmations are delayed, and account notification workflows break. Because Postmark specializes in transactional email, its users typically have critical delivery requirements where every email matters. Unlike marketing email platforms where delayed delivery is inconvenient, delayed transactional emails directly block user actions like resetting passwords or confirming purchases.
Use this page to check Postmark availability. Postmark is known for exceptional reliability, but when outages occur, they impact time-critical transactional emails. Check status.postmarkapp.com for official incident reports. If emails are accepted by the API but not arriving, check spam folders and delivery webhooks before assuming an outage.
Postmark typically delivers emails within seconds. Delays can result from platform infrastructure issues, recipient mail server throttling, or content-based spam filtering. Check your Postmark Activity tab for delivery status details. If multiple recipients across different providers experience delays, it may be a Postmark infrastructure issue.
Postmark's exclusive focus on transactional email generally results in higher delivery reliability and faster delivery times compared to platforms that also handle marketing email. SendGrid offers broader features but serves mixed traffic. Postmark's strict sending policies protect shared IP reputation, which benefits all customers on the platform.
Implement a fallback email provider in your application that activates when Postmark returns errors. Queue undeliverable emails for retry once service resumes. For critical flows like password resets, consider offering alternative verification methods like SMS. Monitor Postmark's status page for estimated recovery times.
Monitor Postmark's API endpoint with PinusX Uptime Monitor for free. Get Slack and email alerts (via a different provider) within 60 seconds of any disruption. Also configure Postmark's delivery webhooks to track bounces, opens, and delivery confirmations for ongoing deliverability monitoring.
Monitor Postmark uptime with PinusX. Get instant alerts when services go down.