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Dispatch

Introduction

Dispatch is a self-hosted .NET service that sits between your applications and your email provider. Point your apps and devices at Dispatch over SMTP (or a Mailgun-compatible HTTP API); it queues every message durably and forwards it to a cloud provider - Mailgun, SendGrid, Amazon SES, Postmark, Resend, SparkPost, SMTP2GO, Maileroo, Bird, Azure Communication Services, or any SMTP smart host - with a live web dashboard to monitor, configure, and troubleshoot everything.

Why Dispatch?

Section titled “Why Dispatch?”

Most applications need to send email. Wiring every app directly to a cloud provider means scattered credentials, no central log, and no fallback when a provider has an outage. Dispatch sits in the middle:

  • 250 OK before anything else - Dispatch writes each message to a local spool file and acknowledges the sender immediately. No database, no HTTP call on the hot path. SQL Server is written after the provider accepts the message.
  • The spool directory is the queue - .eml files survive restarts, crashes, and SQL outages. If SQL Server is down, mail still flows.
  • One place for credentials - rotate an API key once, not in every app.
  • Full message log - after-the-fact history in SQL Server, searchable in the dashboard.
  • Test before you commit - verify provider credentials with a live relay log, or capture mail to the Local Inbox without delivering anything.

Privacy first - no call home

Section titled “Privacy first - no call home”

Dispatch is built to run on your infrastructure and stay there. It never phones home:

  • No telemetry, no analytics, no usage stats - nothing about you, your mail, or your install is ever sent anywhere.
  • Offline license verification, no automatic update pings - Dispatch is commercially licensed, but the license key is validated locally against an embedded public key; the software never reaches out to verify itself or look for new versions.
  • The only outbound connections are to the providers you configure - Dispatch talks to your chosen mail provider (or SMTP smart host) to deliver mail, and to nothing else.
  • Updates are pull-by-you, not push-to-you - you download a signed upgrade package and upload it through the dashboard yourself; there is no background updater calling out.

If you put Dispatch on an isolated network with only your mail provider reachable, it works exactly as designed. See Security for the full model.

Where to next

Section titled “Where to next”
  • Quickstart - running in a few minutes with Docker.
  • How it works - the spool pipeline and data flow.
  • Deployment - Docker, Linux, Windows, or a ready-to-import appliance.