I'm building a marketplace and need receipts and notifications by email

Absolutely — for a marketplace, you’ll usually want two separate email systems:

1. Receipts / transactional emails
2. Notifications / operational emails

Here’s a practical way to think about both.

1) Receipts by email

These are transactional and should be sent automatically after a purchase or payment event.

Typical receipt emails include:

• Order number
• Date/time
• Buyer and seller info
• Items purchased
• Quantity, unit price, subtotal
• Tax, shipping, platform fees, discounts
• Total paid
• Payment method used
• Refund/cancellation policy
• Support/contact links
• Download/invoice link if applicable

Common receipt triggers:

• Order completed
• Payment captured
• Subscription renewed
• Refund issued
• Chargeback/failure notice

Best practices:

• Send from a verified domain like receipts@yourdomain.com
• Use a dedicated provider for deliverability
• Keep the email concise and easy to scan
• Include a clear receipt PDF or HTML view if needed
• Make sure the receipt matches the charge exactly

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2) Notifications by email

These are also often transactional, but can be more event-driven and vary by user role.

Examples for a marketplace:

Buyer notifications

• Order confirmed
• Item shipped
• Refund approved
• Seller messaged you
• Dispute opened

Seller notifications

• New order received
• Payout sent
• Item approved/rejected
• Buyer message
• Chargeback/dispute

Admin notifications

• New seller application
• Fraud/risk alerts
• High-value order alerts
• Failed payout
• Abandoned checkout

Best practices:

• Let users control which notifications they receive
• Separate critical notifications from optional ones
• Avoid sending marketing content in transactional emails
• Support localization if you have multiple regions

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Recommended implementation approach

Use an email service provider

Good options:

• SendGrid
• Postmark
• AWS SES
• Mailgun
• Resend

For marketplaces, Postmark and SES are common for transactional emails.

Structure your system by event

Create internal events such as:

• order.paid
• order.shipped
• payment.failed
• refund.created
• payout.sent

Then map each event to:

• Email template
• Recipient(s)
• Conditions for sending

Build template-based emails

Use templates with variables like:

• {{buyer_name}}
• {{order_number}}
• {{items}}
• {{total}}

This keeps receipts and notifications consistent and easy to maintain.

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Example email types you may need

Receipts

• Order receipt
• Payment receipt
• Refund receipt
• Payout receipt for sellers
• Invoice for B2B buyers

Notifications

• Order confirmation
• Shipping update
• Message alert
• Dispute opened
• Account/security alert

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Important technical considerations

• SPF, DKIM, DMARC set up for your sending domain
• Use a queue/background worker so emails don’t slow down checkout
• Make sending idempotent so duplicate events don’t send duplicate emails
• Log email status: sent, delivered, opened, bounced, failed
• Handle retries and failures gracefully
• Store a copy of sent receipts for compliance

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If you want a simple architecture

A common setup is:

• Your app creates an event after checkout
• A worker consumes the event
• The worker renders the correct template
• The email provider sends it
• You log the result in your database

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If you want, I can help you with any of these next:

1. Designing the email event system
2. Writing receipt email templates
3. Choosing the best email provider
4. Creating backend code examples in Node.js, Python, or Rails