The 2026 State of MailOps Report
What changed, what’s breaking, and what works now
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The 2026 State of MailOps Report is a practical overview of what MailOps teams are dealing with right now: inbox-provider enforcement of authentication requirements, more aggressive filtering driven by engagement signals, ongoing vendor instability, and growing security/privacy pressures. It summarizes the biggest operational challenges and the baseline capabilities teams should expect from modern email infrastructure.
Topics include:
What inbox providers now require by default (SPF/DKIM/DMARC + unsubscribe + complaint-rate enforcement) and why “best practices” are no longer optional.
How inbox filtering is changing and why engagement is increasingly tied to placement.
The most common operational pain points MailOps teams face at scale: performance bottlenecks, IP warm-up, manual overhead, tenant isolation, hygiene, and lock-in risk.
What “good” looks like for an MTA in 2026: control, integration hooks, safe performance, automated traffic shaping, and cloud-friendly deployment.