I've been working on the backend of a student-focused platform — an app aimed at solving a specific challenge students face within their institutions and surrounding communities. The project is still under active development. I'm building the backend, while a friend (who originally proposed the idea) handles the full Frontend.
Recently, I implemented a Celery worker to handle background tasks — one of which is sending verification emails during user onboarding. Simple and straightforward… until deployment entered the chat.
🧩 Challenge 1: SMTP on Railway
I deployed the backend components in stages on Railway so the frontend and backend could progress in sync.
I discovered something crucial:
👉 Railway blocks SMTP ports for users on the Free/Hobby tier.
That broke my original FastAPI-Mail via SMTP set-up.
No email → No user verification → No onboarding → No app.
🧩 Challenge 2: Switching to Resend
Since Railway recommended Resend as their most compatible email API service provider, I switched to Resend.
Here's the twist:
Resend only allows sending emails from verified domains, which we don't have yet.
Their testing domain (@resend.dev) can only send emails to your own email — the same email address used to register the account.
Our entire user creation and onboarding flow relies on email verification for security reasons (authenticity, preventing scams, etc.), so you can imagine how limiting that was.
😅 The Reality of Backend Work
This part drained me for a moment.
But backend engineering is truly:
20% building features, 80% solving unpredictable infrastructure problems.
And that's exactly where the fun is.
🔧 The Way Forward
We've now set up a temporary workaround to keep development moving. In parallel, we're preparing all the proper production needs: domain acquisition, proper email infrastructure, stable hosting, and everything else required for a secured, production-ready system.
Once that's all in place, we drop the workaround and plug in the solid, scalable email flow we originally designed.
That's the life of a backend engineer:
Fix it. Patch it. Adapt it. Deploy it.
And keep the project moving — no matter what the stack throws at you.
