In BoltMail a verified sending domain allows us to prove to spam filters that you own the domain you are sending emails from so they know we are legitimately sending email on your behalf. Without a verified sending domain your emails are more likely to go to spam, so it's pretty important to get this right!
If you don't set up a sending domain you can still use BoltMail but your emails are more likely to be rejected or end up in spam folders.
Sending domains make use of the SPF, DKIM and DMARC protocols. These are industry standard email verification protocols that work together to prevent email spoofing. Use of these protocols is recommended by all the major email service providers including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
Creating a sending domain involves three steps; first you must add the sending domain to BoltMail, then you must add or modify three TXT DNS records for your domain, and finally back in BoltMail you must verify that the DNS records have been added correctly.
To create a sending domain log into BoltMail and click on Domains --> Sending Domains.
Click 'Create new' and enter your domain name. Your domain name is the part after the @ symbol in the email address you want to send from, this should be exactly as it appears after the @ symbol, so do not include www (a common mistake). For example if the email address you will be using is marketing@mydomain.com then your sending domain should be mydomain.com. This must be a domain that you own or control, you cannot verify someone else's domain or a shared domain such as gmail.com
Once created the system will display three DNS records that need to be added to your domain, if you don't know how to do this you should copy the records to your IT support person, web host, domain registrar, or whomever manages your domain name.
Or we can add the records for you, simply open a support ticket and supply us with the login details for your domain registrar.
Once the DNS records have been added, log back into BoltMail and verify that the records have been added correctly from Domains --> Sending Domains
DNS records can sometimes take up to 48 hours to take effect, so you may need to have some patience!
Common DNS issues
DKIM record is too long
The DKIM record is a very long string of text, some DNS providers may not allow you to add a TXT record of that length. There are two solutions for this:
- If your DNS provider supports multiple text blocks for the same TXT record then simply break the long string into two separate blocks of text. What we mean here is two separate blocks of text on the same DNS entry, not multiple DNS entries.
What is happening here is that the DNS specification does not allow a single block of text to be longer than 1024 characters, but the DKIM record is 2048 characters long! However the DNS specification does allow a single TXT entry to have more than one block of text, this allows TXT entries to hold data longer than 1024 characters. All the DNS providers that support strings longer than 1024 characters are simply breaking it in two and storing it that way, but some providers require you to manually break the string up yourself, and others don't support this at all. If your DNS provider does not support this then please see the next option below. - If the above solution does not work then please open a support ticket and ask us to set up a CNAME record for you. We will add the TXT record to our DNS and send you a CNAME record to add to yours. Please email support@boltmail.nz. Please allow 1 business day for us to set this up.
Multiple SPF records
A domain must only have one SPF record. We have noticed that instead of modifying their existing SPF record some customers are adding a second SPF record instead, this is incorrect and may result in your emails going to spam. If your domain already has an SPF record then you must update it to the one we display not add a new one.
