Professional Email on Your Own Domain: SPF, DKIM and DMARC Explained

Why use your own domain for email

A branded address looks professional, keeps your identity consistent and lets you create an address per person or role. It also puts you in control of deliverability, because you manage the records that prove your mail is genuine.

Set up a mailbox in four steps

• Point your domain at the nameservers your hosting gives you.
• In cPanel, create the mailbox under Email Accounts.
• Open Connect Devices for the exact IMAP and SMTP settings.
• Check Email, Authentication and add the SPF and DKIM records at your DNS provider if the domain uses external DNS.

SPF: who may send for your domain

SPF is a DNS record listing the servers allowed to send mail for your domain. Receivers check it and treat mail from other servers as suspicious. Keep it to one SPF record per domain.

DKIM: sign every message

DKIM adds a cryptographic signature to each message. Receivers verify it against a public key in your DNS, proving the message was not altered and really came from your domain. cPanel generates DKIM for you.

DMARC: what to do when checks fail

DMARC tells receivers what to do with mail that fails SPF or DKIM: nothing, quarantine it or reject it, and where to send reports. Start with a monitoring policy, read the reports, then tighten it.

If your mail lands in spam

• Confirm SPF and DKIM are present and passing for the sending server.
• Check that the domain's MX and A records point where you expect.
• Avoid sending bulk mail from a brand-new mailbox on day one.
• Make sure the server's reverse DNS (PTR) matches its hostname when you run your own mail server.

Get started

Mailboxes are included with web hosting. Read the email hosting page or the setup guide in the docs.

SPF says who, DKIM says it is really them, DMARC says what to do if not. Set all three and most spam-folder problems disappear.