How do I configure emails from the platform? (From addresses, SPF records and mail rules)

Our platform uses SendGrid as our bulk emailing service, which means that all emails sent from our platform will run through SendGrid and be delivered by SendGrid servers.

Customising the "From" (Sender) Address for platform emails

The platform will normally send emails from our "no reply" default sender address.  

If you want to customise this "from" address, you can do so at a company account level via the "Default Sender" options found on the Organisation Setup page of the secure portal.

(Organisation & Users>Organisation Setup>Advanced Options)

Also, be sure to update any email connectors to be affected by ticking the "Use Default Sender Email and Name" box.

(Form Connector's Page>Email Connector>Customise Email>From/Sender)

Customers using our branded (white label) offerings can further customise the default sender address as applied to all company accounts under that brand.

This is configured via either area on the secure website:

• Organisation & Users>Organisation Setup>Customise Messages
• Platform & Billing>Manage Platform>Customise Messages

Note that the "Customise Messages" option is purely a brand-level default; changes in the Organisation Setup page of accounts under that brand will override the Customise Messages settings.

Troubleshooting Email Delivery Issues

You may find that emails sent by our platform (via SendGrid) are being filtered or "held" by your email server/provider, resulting in the emails not reaching their intended recipients.

All emails from our platform are currently sent through a single SendGrid IP address:

• 167.89.59.142

Ask your IT administrator to add the above IP to their "approved" email originator lists - this should help with deliverability.

However, relying on IP address whitelisting only is not always sufficient.

If you are using a custom sender email address on your email connectors (or elsewhere on the platform), then you should definitely add an SPF rule to your chosen sender email domain.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) rules allow recipient email servers to verify that platform emails have been authorised to be sent from your sender domain, which in turn prevents your emails from being blocked/bounced as suspected spam.

Adding an SPF entry onto your sender web domain

To add an SPF record, you need to log into the administration area of your sender web domain provider's website.

You may need to search the knowledge base of your web domain registrar for the details of how to add an SPF record.

For example:

• Namecheap article
• GoDaddy article

A quick Google search for "add SPF record <your registrar name>" should find you the help document for your specific registrar.

Once you have found the area in the admin site that lets you add DNS records to your custom domain, you need to include a SendGrid reference.

If you do not have an SPF record for your domain you must create a TXT record with the value:

v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net ~all

Already have an SPF record for your domain?

No problem. You simply need to add the SendGrid include onto your existing record.

For example, if your record looks like this:

v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.google.com ~all

You just need to add include:sendgrid.net at the end of the string, before the ~all mechanism, like so:

v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.google.com include:sendgrid.net ~all

Make sure that you save/apply your SPF record changes.

Once this is done, the number of email bounces/blocks that you experience when sending emails from our platform should be negligible.

Recipient Mail Server Filtering

In some cases having an SPF record on your sender email domain is not enough.

Some email filters are very aggressive and some organisations have very strict receive email rules.

In these cases, you will need to talk to the administrators of the recipient server in question and request that the administrators whitelist SendGrid originating emails sent from your custom sender email address based on the email metadata.  
This means that the filters will have an exception in place to allow your platform emails through.

If none of the above helps, then please feel free to contact our support team for further assistance.

Our support personnel can check our SendGrid administration area to provide more details of blocks/bounces on request.