Configure Swell emails to come from your domain

Delegate a custom subdomain to facilitate easy email authentication

Introduction

When Swell sends email on your behalf, by default it is sent from a Swell-owned domain, with a contact name that makes it clear to recipients that we are communicating on your behalf. For example, it might appear like this in a recipient's inbox:

Your Brand Name (via Swell) <yourbrand@mg.swellcx.com>

Importantly, this email address is used for outbound messages only. When a recipient clicks Reply in an email from Swell, their reply will be addressed to the address you specify in the Reply To field in your message template (for example, support@yourbrand.com). This makes it easy for customers to reach you while maintaining email authentication requirements.

Customizing email origin via DNS record delegation

If you'd prefer to have Swell emails come directly from your own domain, you can add DNS records to your domain which allow Swell to authenticate and send email on your behalf. You will need administrator access to the DNS records for your domain in order to accomplish this.

Instructions for configuring custom domain delegation

1. Identify which domain or subdomain you would like to send email from. For example, you might choose a root domain like mydomain.com or a subdomain like mail.mydomain.com. 
2. Create a CNAME record on your selected domain that points to Swell.
   1. Set the name of the record to swell._domainkey.<yourdomain.com>, substituting your selected domain or subdomain (without brackets).
   2. Set the value of the record to mg.swellcx.com
   3. Save the record. Note that some DNS providers may automatically append your domain name to to the record name. If this happens, only include the part before your domain name (ending in ._domainkey).
3. If your domain has a DMARC policy, and/or you already have an SPF record, update it to include Swell as a sender.
   1. If you already have an SPF record, it likely looks something like this:
      1. v=spf1 <some content> ~all
   2. Add include:mg.swellcx.com separated by single spaces. You can insert it anywhere after v=spf1 and before the all statement.
4. If you have a published DMARC policy, ensure it permits sending from your desired domain or subdomain.
   1. If your DMARC policy is set to strict, the CNAME and SPF records above must be applied to the exact domain or subdomain you wish to send Swell emails from.
      1. These values indicate a strict alignment policy: adkim=s; aspf=s;
   2. A relaxed DMARC policy will allow sending from the root domain or any subdomain with a matching root domain.
      1. Relaxed alignment is the default value, or specified with adkim=r; aspf=r;
5. Contact your Customer Success representative or reach out to our Support team to confirm the domain you'd like to send from. We will verify your DNS configuration and confirm when emails can be sent from your domain via Swell.