Long-form · Vol. I
Essays on email for
one reader, many domains.
A small shelf of long pieces — written to work as standalone essays, not as lead-gen posts. The through-line is the same category we argue everywhere else on this site: that the inbox for one person running many businesses is a real, under-served product category, distinct from the single-self mail client that has dominated since 2006.
Email for the portfolio entrepreneur
Why one reader with five businesses is not five readers with one — and why the inbox has been built for the wrong person for fifteen years.
Read the essay →Google Workspace is priced per user.
Workspace's $7/user/month is correctly priced for what it is. It is also the wrong unit for a portfolio entrepreneur, and the arithmetic adds up faster than most solo operators expect.
Read the essay →SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for solo founders.
The three DNS records that keep your email out of spam folders — written for founders who'd rather ship a product than read an RFC. A plain-English field guide.
Read the essay →One person, five brands — a sending-identity playbook.
A custom-domain email and sending-identity playbook for solo operators: when to bind a new domain, when an alias is enough, and when the two-domain shortcut costs more than it saves.
Read the essay →What the 'via' line in Gmail really means.
That small grey "via amazonses.com" next to a sender's name is telling you something specific about DKIM alignment. Here's what, why it hurts open rates, and how per-domain DKIM fixes it.
Read the essay →Gmail aliases vs. true multi-domain email.
Gmail's 'Send as' is a useful vanity setting for a single self who occasionally needs a second address. It is structurally the wrong abstraction for an operator running more than one business. Here's where it breaks — specifically.
Read the essay →How to set up email for multiple LLCs — one operator, separate entities.
Running several LLCs from one desk means each entity’s email should stay legally and reputationally separate — its own domain, its own DKIM key, its own reply-From — while one person still reads everything in one place. You have three building blocks: a separate domain per entity, an alias on an existing domain, or a subdomain. This is the decision tree for which to use, and what each one costs.
Read the essay →
Sources
New pieces, quarterly-ish.
Folio publishes long-form writing about email and multi-identity operation on a slow cadence. If you'd like to be notified when a new piece lands, the fastest subscription is to start a trial and add writing@wm.emcognito.com to your contacts — new pieces are mailed there first.