Setting Up Your Sending Domain

Email sent from your own domain arrives looking like it came from you. Getting there means adding a few short entries to your domain's settings, once. If we already look after those settings, we do it all for you.

Two addresses, set up in two places

Reggio sends two kinds of email for you, and each has its own address:

• Your site's everyday email: receipts, password resets and form notifications. You set this up under Domains → Sending domains. It comes with any hosting plan or with Email.
• Your newsletter: it sends from its own address, like e.yourbusiness.com, set up in Newsletter → Settings → Plan & sending. It does not need the first one. See Your Newsletter Address.

They are kept apart on purpose, so a newsletter never affects whether your receipts arrive. If you only use the newsletter, skip ahead to Adding the records yourself. The records work exactly the same way for both.

Adding a sending domain for your site's email

1. Go to Domains → Sending domains.
2. Under Add a sending domain, look for Which site is this for? and tap your site. We fill in a suggested name like rd.yourbusiness.com.
3. Or type any domain you own in the box instead.
4. Press Add domain. A window called Setting up rd.yourbusiness.com opens with the records to add.

We recommend a subdomain (a name in front of your domain, like rd.) rather than yourbusiness.com itself. If you type your main domain, we stop and ask Does anyone read email at yourbusiness.com? If people have mailboxes there, press Yes, use rd.yourbusiness.com. That keeps your website's mail and your own inbox from sharing one reputation, so a contact form found by spammers cannot push your own messages into junk folders.

If we look after your domain's settings

When your domain's settings (its DNS) are with Reggio, we add every record ourselves the moment you add the domain. The records window shows Added by us or We added it, still spreading beside each one. There is nothing for you to do but wait for the green Verified badge.

Adding the records yourself

A DNS record is a short line in your domain's settings. These ones tell mail providers we are allowed to send for you, and let them check each message really came from you. You add them wherever your domain is managed, usually the company you bought it from. If someone else looks after that, send them the list from the records window.

1. On Domains → Sending domains, press DNS records beside your domain. For your newsletter address, press DNS records on the Plan & sending tab instead.
2. In your domain provider's settings, create a new record for each row, with the same type and name.
3. Press Copy beside each value and paste it in exactly as shown.
4. Come back and press Check now.

For each domain there are four records to add. For rd.yourbusiness.com they look like this (copy the real values from the page, since the long ones are made for your domain):

A few things that trip people up:

• Some providers add your domain to the end of the name for you. If yours does, type only the front part, like send.rd, or you end up with the domain twice.
• The first value is long. Paste the whole thing, quotation marks included. Do not shorten it.
• Only one SPF line per name. If a name already has a record starting v=spf1 (this mostly happens if you chose your main domain), we show it as Edit your existing record, with your current line and our part already added to it. Change your existing record to that value rather than adding a second one, because two of them stop both from working. If we look after your domain's settings, we make that change for you.

The window also shows DMARC marked Recommended. It is optional and does not change how your mail sends.

What the labels mean

Beside each record in the window:

• Add this: you still need to add it.
• Not found yet: we looked and could not see it. It may be missing, mistyped, or still spreading.
• We added it, still spreading: we added it for you and the internet has not caught up yet.
• Added by us: we added it for you.
• Confirmed: it is in place and correct.

Beside the domain itself you will see Waiting on DNS while we wait, then Verified once everything checks out. Needs attention means a record that was working has gone missing; open the records to see which one. Not verified means we checked for three days and never found them; add the ones marked missing, then press Check now.

How long it takes

Once the records are in, we usually confirm the domain within a few minutes. New records can take a little while to spread, so Not found yet right after adding one is normal. We keep checking automatically, and you can press Check now whenever you like.

Your existing email is not affected

Nothing here changes the email you already use. Your mailboxes keep working exactly as they do now.

If you get stuck, open a ticket and send us a screenshot of your domain's settings. A real person will look and tell you exactly what to change.