CS-Cart email for Mail.ru and Yandex

CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor run on PHP and ship with a Swift Mailer backed configuration. Out of the box you can pick between PHP mail() and SMTP in Settings → General → Email settings. For any Russian-market store, SMTP with a proper authenticated relay is non-negotiable — Mail.ru and Yandex reject unsigned transactional mail outright from unknown IPs.

What makes Russian inbox rules different

• Mail.ru Postmaster: the only reliable way to see your reputation with Mail.ru. Requires domain verification and ingests DMARC reports.
• Yandex Postoffice: similar tool for yandex.ru, ya.ru and yandex.com.tr. Without registering, you are flying blind.
• Strict SPF: Mail.ru treats SPF softfail (~all) more harshly than Gmail. For high-volume senders, a hardfail (-all) with a clean include chain is preferred.
• Feedback loops: Mail.ru has a proper unsubscribe-as-spam feedback loop. Complaint rates over 0.3% get you throttled within hours.
• List-Unsubscribe header: required for any message that is even remotely bulk. Missing it on a confirmation email is not fatal; missing it on a review request is.

CS-Cart SMTP configuration

Settings → General → Email settings. Change method to SMTP. The form accepts standard SMTP credentials.

Unisender (RU transactional) example

# CS-Cart Email settings
Method: SMTP
SMTP host: smtp.unisender.com
SMTP port: 587
SMTP encryption: TLS
SMTP user: <your Unisender login>
SMTP password: <SMTP password from Unisender settings>
From name: Your Store
From email: orders@yourstore.ru

SendPulse example

SMTP host: smtp-pulse.com
SMTP port: 465
SMTP encryption: SSL
SMTP user: <SendPulse SMTP login>
SMTP password: <SMTP password>

Amazon SES (EU Frankfurt)

SMTP host: email-smtp.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com
SMTP port: 587
SMTP encryption: TLS
SMTP user: <SES SMTP username>
SMTP password: <SES SMTP password>

# Request SES production access before launch
# and request a dedicated IP if volume > 50k/day

DNS for .ru senders

; apex = yourstore.ru, relay = Unisender
yourstore.ru.                      TXT   "v=spf1 include:unisender.com -all"

; DKIM — Unisender gives you a CNAME rather than a raw TXT
us._domainkey.yourstore.ru         CNAME  us._domainkey.unisender.com.

; DMARC, publish in English, Mail.ru parses the same syntax
_dmarc.yourstore.ru                TXT   "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourstore.ru; ruf=mailto:dmarc@yourstore.ru; fo=1; adkim=r; aspf=r"

Then register the domain in Mail.ru Postmaster (postmaster.mail.ru) and in Yandex Postoffice (postoffice.yandex.ru). Both require a verification TXT record. Without these dashboards you cannot see complaint rate, which means you cannot react before the reputation tanks.

CS-Cart templates

Templates live at design/mail/templates/. The Russian-language templates ship correctly localised, but a few specifics:

• Cyrillic encoding: verify UTF-8 everywhere. CS-Cart handles this by default but custom templates can break it, producing "?????" placeholders at the recipient end.
• Plain-text alternative: required. Mail.ru treats HTML-only messages more suspiciously.
• Minimal images: Russian customers often read mail on Mail.ru for Android, which aggressively blocks remote images. Ensure the text layout works without images.
• Physical address in footer: required by Russian advertising law for any email that contains an upsell. Confirmation-only emails are transactional and legally exempt, but Mail.ru's classifier does not know that.

Seed-test against the RU provider set

The default seed list on most inbox-placement tools is Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo. That is useless for a CS-Cart store in Russia. You need Mail.ru, Yandex, Rambler, Mail.ru's bk.ru/inbox.ru/list.ru domains, and Yandex's ya.ru/yandex.com.tr.

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