DNS & Setup2 min read
Email DNS Checklist Before You Launch Your Product
MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and test sends — do not ship until this list is green.
Launch day emails that land in spam kill activation. Run this checklist the week before you flip the marketing site live.
The checklist
- MX records (the settings that tell the internet where to deliver email for your domain) points to your mail host, with no leftover records from an old provider
- One SPF record lists every service that sends as your domain
- DKIM is published and verified for each sending service
- A DMARC record exists — start with p=none and a reporting address you read
- Role mailboxes exist: support@, billing@, and postmaster@ or abuse@
- Test messages to Gmail and Outlook arrive in the inbox and show SPF, DKIM and DMARC passing in the message headers
- Password reset and receipt emails are sent through your API key, not a personal mailbox
Leave time for DNS
DNS changes usually take effect within minutes, occasionally up to 48 hours. Do this a week before launch, not the evening before, so you have time to fix a typo.
On launch day
- Watch the delivery log for bounces from the first real sign-ups
- Check that replies to your onboarding mail reach a monitored inbox
- Keep bulk marketing mail off until transactional mail is flowing cleanly
Want to see how your own domain is set up? Use the free SPF checker, DMARC checker and MX lookup: they run in your browser and store nothing.