Help · Settings

Your sending domain

Settings → Domain is where you set up the domain your email is signed with and your links are carried on. It is one errand, done once.

Domain

Your own domain signs your email, so inbox providers can tell it is really from you, and carries the links in your emails and texts, so people see your name rather than ours. Both are set up once, on Settings → Domain, from a handful of records you publish.

Your own domain is the foundation of your email's deliverability, which is how reliably your email reaches the inbox.

Send from your own domain

Your store sends its marketing email from its own domain, so this is the first thing you set up, and your store starts sending once it is ready. It is a few minutes' work that pays back on every email you send: mail signed by a domain you control is mail the inboxes can trust, and the good deliverability your store builds belongs to your domain and stays with you.

Open Settings → Domain and do it yourself. There is no form to fill in and nobody to ask.

Until it is connected you can still see your email in a real inbox. Send a test goes to your team, at the addresses they sign in with, from your store's name via Carpe Messaging, with one line at the top saying why. Nothing else sends — not a campaign, an automation, or a test to anyone on your list — until your domain is connected, and from then on every test and every email comes from your own. Until then a notice at the top of Campaigns and Automations says so:

Until your domain is connected, only tests go out, and only to your team. Campaigns and automations start sending once it is connected.

A manager or owner sees Connect your domain beside it, which opens this page. Everyone else sees who connects it instead:

A manager or owner can connect it in Settings → Domain.

1. Your domain

Email cannot be sent from a store-name.myshopify.com address, and the page says so under the box. Use a domain your store owns, such as yourstore.com.

When your online store sells on a domain of its own, the box is already filled in with it. Change it if your email should come from somewhere else — a store selling on shop.brand.com may well want its email to come from brand.com. When your store's only domain is its myshopify.com address, the box starts empty.

A myshopify.com address is refused when you press Continue. That domain belongs to Shopify, so nobody — not you and not us — can publish the records on it that make a signature possible.

2. The two addresses your email will come from

One for marketing email and one for order and account email. They start as hello@ and orders@, and you can pick anything you like. Nobody has to read either mailbox: where a reply goes is decided by your Reply-to address, further down this page.

Then press Set up sending, once.

3. The records to publish

The page asks you to publish a handful of records at your DNS provider — usually your domain registrar, or whoever you point your domain at — so that your email is signed as yours. It reads top to bottom in the order you need it.

First: can it be done for you? Some DNS providers support Domain Connect, which lets them add all the records to your DNS settings for you. If yours does, the first thing on the step is a button that opens your provider in a new tab. Sign in, check the list, and approve. They add exactly the records shown and nothing else. When your provider is done, that tab closes and you are back on this page, which checks again by itself — there is nothing to press. Your login never passes through us, and once it's done we can't change your DNS settings — it's a one-time approval, not an ongoing connection.

When your provider cannot do that, the step says so in one line and the records below are the way. It takes about five minutes and it works everywhere.

There are three times the button cannot appear even for a provider that supports it: while you are moving to a new domain, when two of the records on the page are still on the domain you are leaving; when one of your link names has been given an extra record to show it is yours; and when a link name is already live. The page says so in the same place, and the records are the way in every case.

Next: the names your links use. They sit above the records because renaming one changes two of the records below it — so choose the word first, then publish. There is more about them further down this page.

Then the records themselves, with a copy button on every name and every value. Check now sits on the same line as the count, and the ⋯ at the top of the card has Copy all records if you would rather take the whole set at once.

If one of your link names is already pointing somewhere, the page says so before either of those — the automatic button and the copying both. Publishing over it would take whatever is there now offline, so rename the link name here, or replace that record on purpose.

If you bought your domain through Shopify, add them there. Go to Settings → Domains, choose your domain, then DNS settings → Manage → Add custom record. Shopify's own domains cannot be set up automatically — nobody can reach them from outside — so the records on our page are the way, and they work.

Add each one as a plain record. If your DNS provider shows a proxy — often a cloud icon beside the record — disable it for these, or your signature cannot be read. And if something is already sitting at the same name, remove it first.

You can close the page. We check every few minutes, and the page checks again whenever you come back to it. Most domains are ready within an hour; a few take up to 72. Check now asks straight away if you would rather not wait.

Every record says where it stands. Beside each one — and beside each of your link names — is a small badge:

• Ready, with a check mark, means the record is published and your email provider has accepted it. Nothing more to do with that one.
• Found, being confirmed means we can see your record at that name and it is exactly right. Your half is done; your provider checks it next, which is the part that takes minutes to hours.
• Not found yet means nothing is published at that name. This is the one to act on.
• Points somewhere else means a record is already there and it is not ours. Publishing over it would take whatever is there now offline, so look at it before you replace it — or rename your link name here instead.
• Checking means we could not read your DNS just then. It is not the same as nothing being there, and it is never a reason to republish a record you have already added.

The heading above the records counts them as you go — 7 records · 4 published — so you can see how far you have got without reading down the list.

The records stay on the page after your domain is ready, under The records you published, each one still marked Ready and still with its copy buttons. Nothing more is being asked of you: they are there so you can compare them against your DNS provider whenever you want to — after a provider change, say, or if anything ever looks wrong with your links.

If we stop looking

If we cannot see your records after three days we stop checking, and the page says so along with what we last saw. Nothing is lost: publish the records and press Check now, and the clock starts again. Use a different domain is in the ⋯ at the top of the card, if the one you typed was not the one you meant.

And if you typed it wrong, you do not have to wait. While a first setup is still being checked the ⋯ at the top of the card offers Start over. Nothing has been sent from that domain and nothing is disabled — your store is not sending from its own domain yet — so there is nothing to undo. Any records you already published can stay where they are; they do no harm. Afterwards you can set up any domain you like, including the same one.

A viewer sees the sentence instead of the button: one setup at a time is what your store may have, and while that setup stands it is the domain we are looking for.

If a setup does not finish

Very occasionally a setup stops partway — the page says so and shows no records, because none were ever made. Press Check now and we pick it up where it stopped. Start over is in the ⋯, if you would rather begin again.

4. Set up

When the records are in, the page says your email now comes from your domain, and names the two addresses and the day it happened. From that moment your store can send, and the two rows at the bottom of this page show the new addresses because they are reading the same thing.

Use a different domain starts the whole thing again for a new domain. It asks you for the new domain and the two addresses, then shows you a fresh set of records to publish. Your current one keeps sending the entire time — nothing switches until the new one is ready, the step says so before you fill anything in, and Cancel on that step leaves everything exactly as it was.

And you can change your mind after you have pressed. Once the new domain is being checked the page offers Stop this change. It puts the new setup away and leaves your current domain sending exactly as it was — nothing you have already published changes — and you can start again with a different domain whenever you like. Typing the domain you already send from is simply refused, so there is no way to press it by accident.

While you are waiting, the names your links use keep working on your current domain. They move across when the new domain is ready, and you will add one more record for each of them then. The page says so beside the names.

Who can do it

An owner or a manager. A marketer and a viewer see the same card and the same records — so they can pass them to whoever manages the domain — and cannot change anything on it.

The names your links use

Links in your emails and texts use these names on your domain, so people see you, not us. That is what customers expect when they hover, and it keeps your sending reputation yours.

Two names come with your sending domain: click.yourdomain.com for the links in your emails, and sms.yourdomain.com for the links in your text messages. Two names rather than one, because emails and text messages are judged by completely different systems: a bad day on one has nothing to do with the other, and keeping them apart is what makes that true.

The text-message name is only asked for once you enable text messages. Until then your sending domain is six records and the text name is nowhere on the page — you may never want texts, and you may be keeping that word for something else. Enable text messages on Settings → Text messages and the seventh record appears here, waiting like any other. If you already published it and later disabled text messages, the name stays on the page: it is yours and it is working.

Each name needs one record at your domain's settings, and it goes in with the rest of your sending records. Once we can see it, we finish the setup and the secure certificate on our side, and your links start carrying your name on the very next send. Sometimes we need one extra record to show the name is yours — if we do, it appears with the others.

A name is usually ready after your domain is, because there is a little more to do on our side. When that happens the table of sending records has gone, so the record that name is still waiting for is shown beside the name itself, with its own copy buttons.

You can rename either one. The pencil at the right of a name takes one short word — lowercase letters or numbers, no spaces, dots or hyphens. Before it happens the page tells you what it costs: your links go out on ours again until the new record is published and we can see it, and nothing is lost and no email fails while you wait. A word another store is already using is refused, and so is one your own domain almost certainly needs — www, mail, shop, api and the like, plus send, which your own sending records use.

Check now beside a name asks straight away rather than waiting for us. If we stopped looking for a name — which happens three days after we first went looking — this is how you start it again.

If you move to a different domain, the names move with you, keeping whatever word you chose. You add one more record for each of them on the new domain when you get there, and the page asks you for it then.

Nothing waits on it. Until each name is ready, links go out on ours exactly as they do today, and you lose no sends.

Two things to know about the record itself. It has to be a plain DNS record and it has to be the only thing at that name — if your DNS provider offers a proxy or a cloud icon beside the record, disable it for this one, and if an older record is already sitting at the same name, remove it. And the word has to be one your domain is not already using: www, mail, shop and api are the usual ones we cannot take, and your own mail already lives at send.yourdomain.com.

An owner or a manager can change any of this. A marketer and a viewer see the same page and the same values, and cannot change them — a marketer may send a campaign, but the address every future campaign carries is standing authority over your mail rather than one decision.

If your store has not set up a sending domain yet, Settings → Email says so instead of showing you empty boxes — there is nothing to change there until your own domain is signing your email. This page is the thing to do first.