This article is about the mailbox you use for your own day-to-day email (for example the account you read in Outlook, Apple Mail or Rackspace webmail). For many of our clients that mailbox is hosted on Rackspace. This is separate from the automated email your store sends, which is covered in the other articles here.
Why your mailbox needs its own setup
When you send an email from your Rackspace mailbox, it leaves through Rackspace's mail servers. For that mail to be trusted, your domain needs to tell the world that Rackspace is allowed to send on your behalf, and it needs a signature that proves the message is genuine. That is the same SPF, DKIM and DMARC idea described in SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained, applied to your mailbox rather than your store.
What we set up for you
When we manage your DNS, we take care of all of this so your Rackspace email is properly authenticated:
- SPF: we authorise Rackspace's mail servers in your domain's SPF record.
- DKIM: we enable DKIM signing on your Rackspace account and publish the matching key in your DNS.
- DMARC: we add a monitoring policy (p=none) so nothing is blocked while everything settles in.
Sending from both your mailbox and your store
It is common for one domain to send both kinds of email: your personal messages through Rackspace and your automated store messages through our delivery service. That is completely fine. We make sure every legitimate sender for your domain is accounted for in a single, correct SPF record, so one does not interfere with the other.
If you are moving to or from Rackspace, or your mail suddenly stops being trusted, get in touch and we will review your records.