Templated Email Systems in ColdFusion: Dynamic Content, Attachments, and Audit Logging

A production-grade templated email system in ColdFusion separates four jobs that alone blurs together: rendering (merging data into a template), validating (recipients, subject, attachments), sending (cfmail, cfmailpart, cfmailparam), and auditing (your own record of who was emailed what, and what happened). Three facts from Adobe's documentation shape the design. First, cfmail supports multipart messages through cfmailpart, where you "specify the simplest version first, with more complex versions afterwards" (plain text, then HTML). Second, attachments go through cfmailparam, and cfmail does not copy attachments when it spools mail to disk, so deleting the file right after the call can make the message fail. Use cfmailparam's remove option instead. Third, cfmail returning without an error means ColdFusion accepted the message, not that it was delivered, because delivery runs through the mail spool. That is why the audit log needs distinct states (queued, submitted, failed) and why ColdFusion's own mail.log and optional mailsent.log are supporting evidence, not your system of record. This guide builds that design step by step, with code, and notes where an Ortus module (cbmailservices) can do part of the job for you.
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