Everyone knows that e-mail is ubiquitous. In fact, if you are reading this, you can probably not conceive of being without e-mail. Although much e-mail is mundane and routine (at best!), many are very serious business indeed, such as proposals, contracts, orders and invoices, legal documents and other critical and/or sensitive correspondence. For these, you want features, such as certifying that a message was actually delivered or including an electronic signature. For this type of functionality, RPost as a Los Angeles-based software company has made a business of providing managed outbound messaging services.
Essentially what RPost does is provide plug-in software for the sender that empowers them with a set of high value outbound messaging tools , including certification (proof of delivery, content, and time), encryption and electronic signatures for contracts. Individual vendors may provide one of these three services, but RPost claims to be the only company to provide all three services in a single integrated product.
The key functionality of RPost's solutions is certification which RPost calls "Registered Email." Electronic certification is the equivalent of the Certified Mail service provided by the United States Postal Service (USPS) for physical mail which provides legal proof of delivery, although RPost's version goes farther with essential features for the electronic world. As part of this process, there is a time stamp that can prove when the e-mail and any attachments were legally sent and received. The recipient needs nothing on their end.
In addition, and very importantly in the electronic world, it is also legal proof of the delivery of the content of the e-mail and its attachments. This is very critical for time-critical legal notices or general correspondence that has consequence if receipt is later denied or content challenged. RPost can attest from legal cases that have involved the use of its service that its solutions deliver as advertised.
A return of a receipt for a fax, courier, certified or registered physical envelope or package only confirms that the envelope or package had been received. It does not give any proof of what was actually mailed. Say that a revised copy of a contract was sent to a recipient. The sender now has proof of what version of the contract was sent, which may prove important if key changes had been made since a previous version.
