Everything you need to know about Brain.

Most customers are fully onboarded within 24–48 hours. The typical flow:

1. Account setup and domain registration — 15 minutes
2. ESP integration (API key or data push) — 30 minutes
3. Postmaster + SNDS connections — 15 minutes
4. DMARC DNS record deployment if needed — up to 24 hours for propagation
5. First signals and baseline established — within the first send cycle

Your onboarding contact walks you through each step. Command plans include a dedicated onboarding session.

No. Brain is a monitoring and intelligence layer — it connects to your existing sending setup and observes. You don't route email through Brain, change your ESP, or modify your sending infrastructure.

Brain reads performance data from your integrations (ESP metrics, Postmaster, SNDS, DMARC reports) and works in the background.

Signal data starts populating within hours of your first integration being connected. Speed depends on the source:

• ESP metrics: Near real-time (minutes after sends)
• Google Postmaster: Within a few hours of your first send after integration
• Microsoft SNDS: Updated daily by Microsoft; Brain reflects within 24 hours
• DMARC aggregate reports: Received daily from receiving providers
• Blacklist checks: Continuous, results immediate

Most customers see meaningful signals within 12–24 hours of completing setup.

Yes. We offer a 14-day trial on all paid plans. No credit card required. The Free tier is forever-free up to 50K emails / month, no card. See pricing →

Brain integrates with major ESPs including SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, Postmark, SparkPost, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and Brevo via API. Custom integrations are available on Brain and Command tiers.

If your ESP isn't on the standard list, contact us — we support custom data ingestion via our API for any provider that exposes campaign and delivery metrics.

Brain connects to your Postmaster account via OAuth — no credentials shared. Once authorised:

1. Go to your Brain dashboard and click Postmaster integration.
2. A browser prompt asks you to select your Google account.
3. Click Allow to grant read-only access.
4. Brain begins pulling domain reputation, spam rate, delivery error, and IP reputation data automatically.

Brain only requests read-only access — it can't change anything in your Google account or Postmaster setup.

Microsoft SNDS provides an automated data URL unique to your account. To connect:

1. Log in to SNDS and copy your automated data URL.
2. In Brain, go to SNDS integration and paste the URL.
3. Brain verifies the connection and begins monitoring your IP reputation, trap hit rates, and complaint data from Microsoft's network.

SNDS data is updated daily by Microsoft. Brain reflects changes within 24 hours.

Brain's DMARC monitoring:

• Generates a DMARC record for your domain if you don't have one
• Verifies the record is correctly published in DNS
• Collects and analyses aggregate DMARC reports from all major receivers
• Alerts when authentication failures are detected (SPF/DKIM misalignment, spoofing attempts)
• Tracks alignment rates over time

If you're unsure where to start, set your policy to none first — Brain monitors and reports without affecting delivery, so you can understand your traffic before enforcing stricter policies.

Yes. The number included differs by tier:

• Free: 1 domain
• Radar ($49/mo): 3 domains
• Brain ($99/mo): 5 domains
• Command ($349/mo): 30 domains

Need more? Stack the Extra Domain Pack add-on at $25 / 5 domains, or talk to us about Custom for unlimited. Each domain gets its own signal feed, health score, incident history, and RCA reports.

DNS propagation can take from a few minutes to 24 hours depending on your DNS provider and TTL. Brain auto-checks every 15 minutes, so no manual action is needed — it confirms once the record is live.

If it's been more than 24 hours, check that:

• The record was added as a TXT record (not A, CNAME, or other)
• It's on the correct subdomain (_dmarc.yourdomain.com)
• There are no duplicate or conflicting DMARC records

If it persists, email help@inboxstack.com — we'll check the DNS lookup directly.

Three paid tiers plus a forever-free entry point:

• Free — $0: 1 domain, daily Postmaster + SNDS sync, weekly DMARC reports, email alerts. No card.
• Radar — $49/mo: 1 ESP connector, 3 sending domains, real-time monitoring across Gmail, Outlook & Yahoo.
• Brain — $99/mo (most popular): 3 ESP connectors, 5 sending domains, Signal Engine, RCA Inspector, Resolution Center.
• Command — $349/mo: Unlimited ESP connectors, 30 sending domains, multi-tenant workspaces, white-label intelligence.

Annual billing saves 20%. See full pricing →

Yes. Upgrade any time — change takes effect immediately and is prorated. Downgrades apply at the end of your current billing cycle. No cancellation fees.

No setup fee, no long-term contract. All plans bill monthly and can be cancelled any time. Annual billing is optional and saves 20%.

You'll see a notification when you approach the limit. Monitoring continues for existing domains — you simply can't add new ones until you upgrade or stack an Extra Domain Pack add-on. We never cut off monitoring without warning.

RCA is Brain's core capability. When a deliverability issue is detected, Brain doesn't just raise an alert — it investigates why it happened.

The RCA Inspector:

• Correlates signals across your sending history, content, authentication, and reputation data
• Uses a causal graph to model how factors interact
• Identifies the primary cause (e.g. "SPF misalignment on subdomain X triggered reputation degradation at Gmail") versus contributing factors
• Generates a plain-language narrative explaining what happened and why
• Recommends a prioritised resolution plan

The narrative is written for any team to understand — not just deliverability specialists.

Brain continuously monitors 15+ signal categories:

• Gmail inbox placement, domain reputation, spam rate
• Microsoft inbox performance, SNDS IP reputation, trap hits
• Yahoo inbox performance, complaint rate, delivery errors
• Hard and soft bounce rates, feedback-loop complaints
• Negative engagement (low open rates, high unsubscribes)
• Subject-line patterns associated with spam filtering
• Content link analysis (malicious or flagged domains)
• DNS record health (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX, PTR)
• Blacklist presence across 30+ major lists
• DMARC aggregate report anomalies and authentication failures

Brain's anomaly detection compares current signal values against your historical baseline. Even a subtle deviation — a reputation score that hasn't dropped yet but is trending down, or a minor uptick in complaints before they reach a threshold — triggers an early warning.

The Radar Monitor provides a real-time risk view across all your domains so you can act before a small issue becomes a full inbox-placement failure.

The Incident Board is a real-time view of all active and resolved deliverability incidents across your domains. Each incident includes:

• Severity level (critical, high, medium, low)
• Affected domain and signal type
• Timeline of when the issue started and how it progressed
• Link to the full RCA report with root cause and resolution steps
• Current status (open, in progress, resolved)

It replaces ad-hoc Slack messages and spreadsheet tracking — everything in one place with full context.

The War Room is a command-centre view designed for high-severity incidents or major send campaigns. It gives your team a single screen with live signal feeds, active incident status, and RCA progress — all updating in real time so everyone is looking at the same data during a crisis.

No subscriber data is ever collected. Brain doesn't access your mailing lists, subscriber profiles, email addresses, or the content of individual emails sent to recipients.

What Brain does collect:

• Performance metrics — delivery, bounce, open rates (aggregated, not per-subscriber)
• Authentication data — SPF/DKIM/DMARC alignment results
• Campaign-level metadata — subject lines, send volumes, send times
• Reputation data — Postmaster, SNDS, blacklist APIs

No PII. No subscriber lists. Ever.

All data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest. Brain's infrastructure runs on ISO 27001-compliant Google Cloud regions. Customer data is logically isolated per account — no cross-customer access is possible.

For Custom-tier customers with specific data-residency requirements, regional deployment options are available.

No. Brain only needs read-only API access to your ESP's reporting and analytics endpoints. It can't send emails, modify lists, or change settings. We recommend creating a dedicated read-only API key for Brain — your security team can audit and revoke it independently.

This is exactly what Brain is built for. When Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo starts routing your mail to spam, Brain:

1. Detects the placement drop through signal monitoring
2. Creates an incident and starts RCA automatically
3. Cross-references your recent sends, content, authentication, and reputation changes to identify what changed
4. Surfaces the most likely cause (a new sending IP without warm-up, an authentication break, a content pattern, a spike in unsubscribes)
5. Provides a step-by-step resolution plan

You get this in minutes, not hours of manual investigation.

Brain checks your domains and IPs against 30+ blacklists continuously. When a listing is detected:

• Immediate alert with the specific blacklist, listed entity, and the listing reason if available
• RCA investigates likely causes (spam complaints, sending to invalid addresses, authentication failures)
• Brain provides delisting instructions for each blacklist, including the direct submission URL where available

For persistent or recurring listings, the Pattern Library shows whether similar issues have occurred before, helping identify the systemic root cause.

Brain tracks hard and soft bounce rates as dedicated signals with anomaly detection. A rising bounce rate triggers an incident. The RCA distinguishes between:

• List hygiene issues: high hard bounces suggesting stale or purchased lists
• Reputation-based blocks: soft bounces from providers blocking your IP or domain
• Authentication rejections: bounces caused by DMARC reject policies
• Rate limiting: temporary deferrals from providers being sent to too fast

Each diagnosis comes with specific remediation steps.

Yes. The Command tier ($349/mo) is built for this. You organise domains by client within a single account, with separate signal feeds, incident histories, and health reports per client. Each client's data is isolated so you can manage and report on them independently.

Custom alert routing lets you receive notifications per-client or aggregate them — your choice.

On Command, you can export domain health reports and RCA summaries as PDFs. White-label reporting (with your agency branding) is included. Client portal access is in beta — speak to our team about early access.

• Free / Radar: Email support, response within 48 business hours
• Brain: Priority email support, response within 24 business hours
• Command: Priority support with a quarterly check-in call
• Priority Phone Support add-on (+$300/mo): Direct line + 4-hour response SLA from a senior deliverability engineer

All plans can reach us at help@inboxstack.com.

Yes — Brain is designed to make expert-level intelligence accessible to any email team, regardless of technical depth. RCA narratives are written in plain language; resolution plans are step-by-step. You don't need to know what a Postmaster spam-rate threshold means — Brain tells you whether yours is a problem and what to do about it.

We also offer onboarding sessions and knowledge-base articles to help your team get the most out of the platform.

Email help@inboxstack.com or call +91 88602 49616 during business hours (Mon–Fri, 10am–10pm IST). For billing or account changes, use the same email and include your account domain in the subject line for fastest routing.