Email from your own domain

Send flow emails from your own address, like you@yourbrand.com, and get replies back on the person's profile and in your inbox. The DNS records, step by step.

Flow emails can come from your own address, like you@yourbrand.com, instead of Sporetag's address with your name. This is "(when shipped)" until Sporetag switches on its email partner, Amazon SES. Until then, emails go from Sporetag's address with your name, and replies go to your Replies go to address.

What you get:

Emails come from your own address. People see your name and your domain.
Replies come back to Sporetag, count on the flow, and go on to your own inbox. To the person, it is a normal reply.
Inboxes trust mail signed by your own domain more, so fewer emails land in spam.

You add a few DNS records once. It takes about ten minutes, plus waiting for DNS.

Step 1: add the domain

Open the site, then Automations, then Settings.
Under Email from your own domain, enter your domain, like yourbrand.com. It starts with your site's domain.
Enter the address to send from, like you@yourbrand.com, and the name people see.
Choose Add domain.

Sporetag asks Amazon SES to get ready for your domain, then shows the records to add. Each record has Copy buttons for its name and value.

A domain belongs to your account. Every site in your account can use it: pick it under Send this site's email from.

Step 2: add the records

Type	Name	Value	What it does
CNAME (3 of them)	`<code>._domainkey`	`<code>.dkim.amazonses.com`	Signs your email (DKIM), so inboxes know it is really from you.
MX	`bounce`	`feedback-smtp.<region>.amazonses.com`, priority 10	Takes bounce reports.
TXT	`bounce`	`v=spf1 include:amazonses.com ~all`	Lets Amazon send for you (SPF).
MX	`reply`	`inbound-smtp.<region>.amazonaws.com`, priority 10	Brings replies back to Sporetag.
TXT (suggested)	`_dmarc`	`v=DMARC1; p=none;`	Tells inboxes what to trust (DMARC). Skip it if you have one.

The page shows the exact codes and region for your domain. Copy them from there.

The bounce and reply names are new subdomains just for this. They do not change your normal email. Your own inbox keeps working as it is.
The bounce name must have exactly one MX record. The reply name needs Amazon as its only mail server.
On Cloudflare, set the three CNAME records to DNS only, the gray cloud.
Some DNS hosts ask for the priority in its own box. Enter 10.
If your domain already has a DMARC record, keep yours. The page says when it finds one.

The page names your DNS host when it can tell (Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace and others), with that host's steps and a link to its DNS page. Where your DNS host supports Domain Connect, a button sets everything up in one go.

Step 3: wait for Verified

Opening the page checks each record live, and so does Check now. We also check every 15 minutes. Each record shows Found, Different (with what it holds now) or Not found yet.

When Amazon has seen the DKIM records, the domain shows Verified. That is usually minutes after DNS updates, and at most 72 hours. From then on, the site's flow emails go out from your address.

Replies

Each email has its own reply address on your reply subdomain, like you+3f9a...@reply.yourbrand.com. People never type it. They just press reply.

When someone replies:

Sporetag matches it to the person and the email they got.
The flow counts it as a reply.
Sporetag forwards it to your inbox, from your own address, with Reply-To set to the person. Answer from your inbox, and your answer goes straight to them.

Replies go to Forward replies to, else Replies go to, else your account email. Out-of-office replies, spam and viruses are not forwarded. Replies over 150 KB, usually ones with large attachments, bounce back to the sender: Amazon's limit for passing mail on.

Bounces and complaints

If an address bounces for good, or someone marks your email as spam, Sporetag stops emailing that address from the site. It is added to the same list as unsubscribes.

If it does not verify

Different: the record holds another value. Change it to the value shown.
Not found yet: add the record, or wait. DNS can take up to an hour.
Failed: Amazon stopped looking after 72 hours. Check the three DKIM records, then remove the domain and add it again.

Remove a domain

Choose Remove on its row. Sites that used it go back to Sporetag's address. You can delete the DNS records afterward.