Because Mago sends emails out on your behalf, it's important to make sure that your email is ready for Mago.
First, a note: If you're reading the instructions and feeling intimidated about all this, don't worry! When you've never done something before and it sounds pretty technical, it's normal to feel a bit out of your depth. The good news is that it's pretty straightforward once you get pointed in the right direction.
More good news: it is not necessary for you to fully understand what any of this actually means, as long as you can copy and paste, so try not to get bogged down with all the technical stuff.
Best news: Your email host will probably complete this process for you, if you provide them the information here.
Here's a basic overview of the process:
- Sign into your domain management portal. You should have instructions for that from when you registered your domain.
- Navigate from the login to the "dns management" page. They may call it something else, but look for something like that.
- Find where you "add a record" You will be adding some CNAME records, and some TXT records.
- There will usually be 2 fields for you to fill in. The first one is usually called "host" or "value" and the second one is usually called "points to" but it can be "value" if the first one was host.
- Scroll down to the instructions below and copy the first item, which is em4864 and paste that in the first field they have for you to fill in, usually called "host."
- Come back to the instructions, and copy the second part. In our example, it's U93598.wl099.sendgrid.net
- Back in your dns management portal, paste that into the second empty field.
- (optional) if there is a third field that says something like "TTL" and it's prefilled, leave it. If it's empty, put 1440. This will not impact what we are doing here, but some will require you to put something in that field.
- Click "save" or "update" or the equivalent.
- Repeat for all the records shown, taking care to select the right type of record (CNAME or TXT) and saving after each one.
Okay so now hopefully you're feeling a little better prepared to tackle this since you've had a bit of a preview, but if this still sounds like gibberish to you, we get it! We wish we could be more specific, but every domain registrar is going to have a slightly different procedure for this.
The process should be well documented, with step by step instructions, specific to you, available from your domain hosting service. They are your greatest resource when completing this process if you have questions. Some will even do it for you if you ask.
Here are the records you're going to want to add:
Select “CNAME” as the record type for these records. Copy and paste the values into the corresponding fields, making sure to avoid pasting leading spaces.
Host: em4864
Points To: U93598.wl099.sendgrid.net
Host: m._domainkey
Points To: m.domainkey.u93598.wl099.sendgrid.net
Host: m2._domainkey
Points To: m2.domainkey.u93598.wl099.sendgrid.net
Host: 93598
Points To: sendgrid.net
Host: smtpmail1._domainkey
Points To: smtpcustomer._domainkey.smtpsend.com
Do this for ALL domain names you want to send email from.
That’s it for the CNAME records!
Now we just need to do a couple more things. The process is very similar except these will be TXT records instead of CNAME records. Start with this one:
Host: _dmarc
TXT Value: v=DMARC1; p=none
The last one can be tricky which is why we saved it for last because by now you're a pro at this. It's for what is known as your "SPF" record. Many domains come with a basic SPF record in place, so look at your list of existing records and check if you already have one that starts with "v=.spf1...."
If you DO NOT see anything like that in your existing records, create a new txt record with these values:
*Host: @
TXT Value: v=spf1 a mx ip4:198.21.3.112 include:_spf.smtp.com ~all
If you DO already see a record in there that starts with "v=spf1....." but is not identical to the one above, DO NOT CREATE ANOTHER ONE. You'll need to edit the existing one by opening it and pasting
ip4:198.21.3.112 include:_spf.smtp.com
after your other entries and before the “all” portion.
Once you have all that done, create a support ticket to let us know what domain names you’ve added those records to. We will verify them on my end and either let you know that you’re good to go, or that you need to make some adjustments.
You can check the last two for yourself.
- Go to mxtoolbox.com/spf/aspx .
- Type in your domain name, usually without the WWW
- Click the spf record look up (ignore the IP field)
A green indicator means that everything is correct.
If you click the dropdown arrow on the yellow "SPF Record Lookup" box and select "DMARC Lookup" then click the DMARC lookup button, you can also verify that you did that one right on your own. This is what you want to see: