Deliverability · Email

This page maps the shared deliverability model onto email: which records prove your identity, how dedicated IPs isolate your reputation, and where to watch for trouble. Each section links to the page that covers the mechanics in full; go there for the record shapes, API payloads, and edge cases.

Email authentication on Bird is per organization, even on a shared domain: Bird generates a DKIM signing key for your organization and gives you its public half to publish under a selector unique to you, so your authentication proof is yours alone no matter who else sends from the same domain. Alongside DKIM, you publish a return-path (envelope-from) CNAME that routes bounces through Bird and gives you SPF alignment without touching your apex, and a DMARC record that states your policy for mail failing those checks.

The send gate is DKIM + return-path + DMARC. A domain sends only once all three verify. The fourth record, the tracking CNAME for branded open and click tracking, is separate and optional: it gates branded tracking, never sending.

By default your mail rides the Shared Bird.com Pool, Bird's shared sending infrastructure, and that stays your default until you explicitly change it. Dedicated IPs are the opt-in alternative: addresses only your organization sends from, organized into org-scoped pools that every workspace can use. Two safeguards keep a cold IP from hurting you: new IPs warm automatically with overflow routed through the shared pool, so your volume never drops, and the default-pool rules stop you from pointing unrouted traffic at a pool with nothing ready to send.

Per send, choose a pool with the optional ip_pool_id field on the send request; omit it to use your default.

Your reputation signal arrives as events: bounce and complaint events tell you which addresses are failing and who is reporting you, and Bird's suppression list automatically stops repeat sends to hard bounces, complainers, and unsubscribes before they leave the platform. Aggregate delivery, open, and click rates are on the Metrics page in the dashboard; a falling delivery rate or rising complaint rate is your earliest warning. To dig into a specific send, open it in the email log. If you also want the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC verdicts the receiving mailbox recorded, paste the received copy's raw source into the Email header analyzer.

Two adjacent things to know: BIMI, your logo in supporting inboxes, is a DNS record you publish yourself rather than a Bird-managed capability, and Bird's v1 API has no blocklist-status endpoint.