Email sender records for client software: setting them up

Mailbox providers try to protect people from spoofed email. When a message claims to come from your firm but is sent by a separate platform, the receiving server looks for evidence that your firm approved that platform. Without it, messages may land in spam or be rejected, and clients never see their invoices or reminders.

Sender records are DNS entries published on your domain. They act like a public list of approved senders and a way to verify that a message was not altered in transit. Setting them up correctly protects both deliverability and your firm’s reputation.

SPF, short for Sender Policy Framework, is a DNS record listing the services allowed to send mail for your domain. A domain can have only one SPF record, so adding a platform usually means editing the existing record rather than creating a second one. Duplicate SPF records are a common and avoidable mistake.

DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail, adds a digital signature to each message. The sending platform signs mail with a private key, and you publish the matching public key in DNS. Receiving servers use it to confirm the message is genuine. Many domains also publish a DMARC policy telling receivers what to do when these checks fail.

Before your firm’s domain is used for sending, review what already sends mail on your behalf: your email provider, newsletter tool, practice management system and any others. Knowing the full list helps you update SPF without accidentally removing an existing sender.

When full launch arrives, expect the platform to supply the specific records to add. Make changes carefully, test with a message to a few mailboxes, and keep a note of what you changed and why. A written change log makes later troubleshooting far quicker.

• Confirm who controls your DNS settings
• List every service that currently sends mail as your firm
• Check whether you already publish an SPF record
• Note any existing DMARC policy and its reporting address

One flat license covers your brand, unlimited staff and the firm console. Your clients stay on published HelloBooks plans, and your firm gets 20% off each one. Founding firms go live first on a firm subdomain; your own domain and email from your domain follow at full launch.