Set up your email domain

An email deployment answers the email your customers send, from your own domain, such as support@acme.com. Before it can send and receive there, add the domain to your workspace and publish a few DNS records at your DNS host.

Domains live in Connections → Emails → Domains, at help.ai/w/your-workspace/emails/domains.

Add the domain#

1. Open Domains and select Add domain.
2. Enter the domain your customers email, such as acme.com, without https:// or a path.
3. Select Add domain. The domain's page lists the records to add.

Each domain belongs to one workspace. Your own mailboxes on the domain, at Google, Microsoft or any other provider, keep working: help.ai sends with its own records and receives on a subdomain.

Add the records#

The domain's page lists every record with a copy button for its name and value, and the status help.ai sees.

Some DNS hosts add your domain to the end of every name. If yours does, enter only the part before your domain, such as bounce.

Verify#

The page checks again every 30 seconds, and Check again checks right away. Each record turns Found once your DNS host publishes it, usually within minutes and at most 72 hours. When the DKIM records are found, the domain shows Verified and email deployments can use its addresses.

Then add the addresses to an email deployment, in its Addresses card, such as support@help.acme.com or *@help.acme.com for every address. To keep customers writing to support@acme.com, forward that mailbox to the deployment's address, or to its Forwarding address.

Step up DMARC#

DMARC tells mail providers what to do with email that claims to be from your domain but fails DKIM and SPF. It keeps others from sending as you, and Gmail and Yahoo expect it from businesses that send email. The domain's DMARC card shows what your domain has now and the record to publish next:

1. Not set up: publish v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@acme.com as a TXT record at _dmarc.acme.com. Nothing changes for your email yet, and the reports sent to the rua address show everyone who sends as your domain.
2. Monitoring (p=none): once the reports show only help.ai and your own mail services, change p=none to p=quarantine. Email that fails then lands in spam.
3. Enforced (p=quarantine or p=reject): you're done.

Before you enforce, make sure every service that sends as your domain, such as your mailbox provider, newsletter or billing tool, signs with DKIM or passes SPF for your domain.

Show your logo with BIMI (optional)#

BIMI shows your logo beside your email in inboxes that support it. It needs DMARC set to quarantine or reject.

1. Make a square logo in the SVG Tiny PS format and host it at a public https address, such as https://acme.com/bimi/logo.svg.
2. Add a TXT record at default._bimi.acme.com with v=BIMI1; l=https://acme.com/bimi/logo.svg;. The domain's Brand logo (BIMI) card has it ready to copy.

Gmail and Apple Mail show the logo only with a Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) or Common Mark Certificate (CMC), which you buy from a certificate authority. Yahoo, AOL and others may show it without one.

What help.ai handles for you#