What is the sender domain authentication in Mailercloud?

What is domain authentication?

Domain authentication is the sender's credibility verification process. It helps the email recipient identify whether the email is actually sent from a sender whom they are claiming to be. It has an immensely positive impact on the reputation of the sender and email deliverability by filtering out spam and fraud. Internet service providers (ISP) cannot trust messages that don’t have the authentication set up, as they cannot be certain about the source of the message. The most common email authentication standards are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

How to set up domain authentication in Mailercloud?

To authenticate your domain, you need to add the DNS records provided by Mailercloud to your domain providers such as Godaddy, Cloudflare, etc. Here, we have included a step-by-step guide to help you with domain authentication. Also, you can learn how to do this, by watching the video tutorial as follows or referring to the steps mentioned in this section.

Step 1: Add domain to your Mailercloud account

To add a domain to your Mailercloud account, Please complete the following steps

Go to Account.
Click on Settings.
In the drop-down menu click on Domains.
Click on the Add domain button to add a domain.

On the pop-up screen that follows, add your domain and domain provider and Proceed.

Your domain has been added successfully.

Step 2: Add DNS records to your domain provider

You will now have to add the DNS records to your domain provider. These records will be the CNAME and TXT records that you get after adding the domain. You will need to copy those values and paste them into the domain provider.

How to add a DNS record with a provider?

Following is a list of help docs that will help you to complete this process

If a user adds DMARC to their domain provider, they just need to update the TXT record in their provider. If not, they need to add the DMARC record as CNAME.

Also, the users who have already published TXT records for SPF, must delete the previous record and add the new record.

Add only one SPF record of a domain in the domain provider. If more than one is added, it will affect email sending.
Add a valid SPF TXT record to your domain provider.
For more than one SPF record, please combine the record and add it in the domain provider.

Step 3: Authenticate Your Domain

Once you updated the DNS records to your domain providers, Please click on the Authenticate button to complete the process.

Other use cases

Depending on whether the domain has a mailbox or not, there are three scenarios for adding a domain.

Case-1: If the domain has a mailbox, you can simply add the domain by following the detailed steps mentioned above.

Case 2: If it does not have a mailbox, you will need to add a subdomain first and then proceed with the rest of the procedure to add the domain.

Case 3: If there is no mailbox and you want to send using domains, you will need to add the following records.

Host @

Type: MX

Points to: mail.mlrcld.com.

Priority 10:

How to add a sender ID?

To add a sender ID on Mailercloud-

Go to Account.
Click on Settings.
In the drop-down menu click on Sender management.
Click on Add sender.

Fill in the details in the pop-up form that slides open on the right-hand side of your page. These details include the email address, the reply email address, company name and address, etc.

Click on Continue.
You will be sent a verification email.
Click on the link in the verification email to confirm and complete the process of adding a new sender email ID.

Mailercloud restricts domains from all major ISPs and those with a strict DMARC policy, affecting email campaign deliverability. Also, disposable email domains are restricted.

Issues encountered while updating DNS

Delay in domain authentication

It's a common issue encountered while adding the DNS records to the domain service providers like Cloudflare, GoDaddy, and others. Users generally face a delay in domain authentication.

To resolve this issue, you are recommended to disable the proxy status in the domain service provider panel. This will make the domain authentication process faster.

Duplicate SPF records

Another issue encountered is the duplicate SPF records in the domain service provider panel. To overcome this issue, you must ensure that there is only one SPF record in your domain provider. If you have more than one SPF, then it should be merged.

Hereby, Mailercloud will merge this for you. For instance, if you already have SPF in your domain provider, like v=spf1 include:spf.pearson.com-all, then we will merge this SPF with ours. Thereafter, we will create an SPF TXT, which will appear like v=spf1 include:mlrcloud.com include:spf.pearson.com. Now, you just need to:-

Delete the existing SPF record and add the merged SPF record in your domain provider, which is shared by Mailercloud. For instance, v=spf1 include:mlrcloud.com include:spf.pearson.com -all.
Return to Mailercloud's DNS records menu and click the "Verify" button.

These are the two most common issues experienced by the users. If you follow the recommendations mentioned in this section, your domain authentication will work fine.

Important FAQs

I am asked to authenticate the domain. What is domain authentication?

Domain authentication is a verification process ensuring that a genuine sender sends an email.

Will domain authentication affect my current email-sending potential?

No, domain authentication will not affect your current email-sending potential.

How many domains can I authenticate in a plan?

You can authenticate as many domains as you want in a plan.

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