A step-by-step guide on verifying your domain (DKIM, SPF, DMARC) in Flodesk manually for the first time

Starting early February 2024, major inbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo are requiring senders to meet a new standard of email authentication. While these authentication standards have long been considered best practices, they will now be required in order to ensure a high deliverability rate and staying out of the spam box.

If you’re sending from a custom domain that hasn’t been authenticated (via DKIM or SPF) and/or doesn’t have DMARC properly configured, you’ll need to verify your domain in order to meet the requirements.

The good news is that Flodesk makes it easy to check whether or not your email address meets these requirements by navigating to My Account > Domain setup.

This guide will walk you through the steps to verify your domain via DKIM, SPF, and DMARC manually.

Note: we also provide a quick way to authenticate your domain in just a few clicks, using our automated integration. By signing into your DNS provider, we can automatically set up the required authentication records (DKIM, SPF, and DMARC) for you.

Step 1. Log into your Flodesk account and go to My Account > Domain setup

Step 2. If you have not started the authentication process, you can click the “Authenticate now” button and select the option to manually add records.

Step 3. Click on the “I’ll do it manually” button. From here, you will be taken through our wizard to see all of the records you will need to manually copy/paste into your DNS management tool.

Step 4. Open a new browser tab and sign in to your domain provider’s account. When ready, click Next.

Step 5. Depending on your account setup, you’ll either see five sets of records or three sets of records.

If your account has five sets of records, you’ll have:

• One SPF record

• Three sets of DKIM records

• One DMARC record

If your account has three sets of records, you’ll have:

• One SPF record

• One DKIM record

• One DMARC record

Use the built-in Copy buttons to copy your relevant (missing) records and then paste them into your domain provider’s account. You need to add the DKIM and SPF records as CNAME records, and the DMARC record as a TXT record.

Step 6. After entering your authentication records, click Next and select Done on your Flodesk screen.

Note: The domain verification card will initially show as “Pending” as it can take up to 48 hours for your domain to be verified.

Step 7. Wait 24-48 hours and come back to check if your domain has been successfully authenticated.

The best way to protect your sender reputation and ensure that your emails land in the inbox is to use a custom domain email address that has been verified.

To finish verifying your custom domain, go to My Account > Domain setup, click the “Authenticate now” button on your domain card and follow the prompts to add any missing DKIM, SPF, or DMARC policy records.