Config Snapshots and Zero-Downtime Publishing

MailAdx uses a snapshot-based configuration model to ensure ad server changes take effect atomically and without downtime.

What is a config snapshot?

A config snapshot is a complete, immutable representation of your ad server configuration at a specific point in time — all placements, floor prices, deal terms, creative assignments, and waterfall priorities. The ad server always runs against a specific published snapshot. Unpublished changes you make in the Dashboard do not affect live traffic until you explicitly publish.

This model gives you a staging buffer: make changes, preview the snapshot diff, test in sandbox, and publish when ready. If a published change causes issues, roll back to the previous snapshot instantly.

Creating and publishing a snapshot

  1. Make configuration changes in the Dashboard (create/edit placements, deals, floor prices, etc.).
  2. Navigate to Dashboard → Ad Server → Publish. You will see a diff view showing exactly what changes will take effect.
  3. Review the diff. For destructive changes (removing a placement or deal), a warning badge is shown.
  4. Click Publish. The new snapshot propagates to all ad server nodes globally within 30 seconds.

Rollback

Every published snapshot is stored permanently. To roll back: Dashboard → Ad Server → History → click the snapshot you want to restore → Restore this snapshot. Restoration publishes the historical snapshot immediately — there is no staging step for rollbacks to enable fast incident recovery.

Snapshot environments

MailAdx provides three environments: Production (live ad serving), Sandbox (test ad serving with synthetic demand), and Staging (available on Enterprise — mirrors production config with separate test traffic). Sandbox and Staging use separate API keys from Production and have no billing implications. Use Sandbox to test new placement configurations or creative formats before publishing to Production.

Automated publishing via API

For advanced workflows, the Config API allows programmatic snapshot creation and publishing. This enables CI/CD-style deployment pipelines where configuration changes are version-controlled in Git and published via a deploy script. See the Developer Hub for the Config API reference.