> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.talario.eu/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Receiving overview

> How Talario accepts, stores and delivers incoming email.

Talario receives email for domains whose MX record points to `mail.talario.eu`. There are no mailboxes, IMAP or POP3: your application receives every message through webhooks and the REST API.

## Lifecycle of a message

**1. SMTP**

Talario checks every recipient against the routes of the domain while the sender is still connected. Recipients without a matching route are rejected with `550 5.1.1`. Messages with malware and spam detected during the SMTP session are rejected as well. Talario never sends a bounce later, so forged senders do not receive backscatter.

**2. Storage**

An accepted message is stored privately in the EU, unchanged and including all attachments and Talario's receiving headers. Every message gets an `id` (a UUIDv7). The external `Message-ID` header is kept as metadata but is not an identifier you can rely on.

**3. Parsing**

Talario parses the MIME structure: subject, text, HTML, headers and attachments. You can read the [parsed content](/receiving/parsed-content) through the API. The original message always stays available.

**4. Webhooks**

For every recipient and webhook action of its routes, Talario delivers a signed [webhook](/webhooks/overview) to your endpoint and retries for up to 24 hours.

**5. Expiry**

Seven days after it was received (`expires_at`), the message and its parsed content are no longer available. Its metadata stays available through the API.

## Recipients and copies

Talario handles every envelope recipient on its own: routes, webhooks and results are determined per recipient. A webhook names exactly one `recipient`, never the other envelope recipients. Recipients of the same domain share one stored message and one `id`.

The `To` and `Cc` headers inside the message are kept as the sender wrote them. They are not the list of envelope recipients; a `Bcc` recipient, for example, appears only as `recipient` of its own webhook.

## Privacy

The dashboard shows when a message arrived, its envelope sender, recipient and delivery state, but never its subject, text or attachments. The content is available only to your application, through webhooks and API keys with receiving access.

## Retention

| | Available until |
| - | - |
| Original message, parsed content, attachments | `expires_at`: 7 days after `received_at` |
| Download links | at most 1 hour, never after `expires_at` |
| Automatic webhook retries | 24 hours after `received_at` |
| Manual webhook retries | `expires_at` |
| Metadata through the API | after `expires_at` as well |

Talario is not an archive. Store messages you need for longer in your own application.


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