Business Email

A sending address is for the emails you send out. Business Email is the other half: proper mailboxes on a domain you own, that receive mail as well as send it, with an inbox you read without leaving your dashboard.

You'll find it under Emails then Business Email.

The order things happen in

1. Connect a domain you own and publish its records.
2. Wait for the checks to go green.
3. Create a mailbox on it.
4. Open the inbox and start reading and writing.

You can't skip step one. Mailboxes are built on a connected domain, so until there is one, Add mailbox stays greyed out.

Connecting your domain

Click Domains & DNS at the top of the page.

1. Type your domain, for example yourband.com, into the box.
2. Click Add domain.
3. It appears in the table with a row of status badges, all pending.
4. Open the row's More menu and pick View DNS records.

Publishing the records

The dialog lists every record you need, each with a Type, a Host and a Value. Click the copy icon on any row to take the value exactly as written.

They do different jobs:

• The MX record is what routes incoming mail to your new mailboxes. Without it, nothing arrives.
• The SPF, DKIM and DMARC records prove that mail claiming to be from your domain really is, which is what keeps your messages out of spam folders.
• The extra records on the mail host cover the return path, so bounces come back to your own domain rather than somewhere generic.

To publish them:

1. Open the dashboard where you manage your domain's records, usually wherever you bought the domain.
2. Create each record with the matching type, host and value. Copy the values rather than retyping them, because a single wrong character fails the check silently.
3. Save everything and give it a few minutes.

Checking it worked

Back on Domains & DNS, open the row's More menu and click Re-check. Each badge on the row updates independently:

• Verify: we can see the domain is yours.
• MX: incoming mail will reach your mailboxes.
• SPF, DKIM, DMARC: your outgoing mail is authenticated.
• MAIL FROM: the return path is on your own domain.

Re-check as often as you like. Records sometimes take an hour or two to become visible everywhere. Until the domain is fully verified, its mailboxes can be created but Open inbox stays disabled, since there is nowhere for mail to arrive from yet.

To disconnect a domain, use Delete in the same menu.

Creating a mailbox

Back on the main Business Email page, click Add mailbox.

1. Address. Type the part before the @, for example hello or bookings, then pick the domain from the dropdown beside it. The full address is shown underneath so you can check it.
2. Display name. What recipients see next to the address in their inbox, for example your name or your band's name.
3. Click Create.

A password is shown once, immediately after the mailbox is created. Copy it before closing that dialog. It isn't shown again. You only need it to sign the mailbox into a mail app on your phone or computer, and you can always create a fresh one later, but there is no way to reveal this one again.

The mailbox table

Every mailbox is listed with:

• The Address and the Name.
• Usage: how much of the mailbox's storage is used.
• Daily limit: how many messages it can send per day.
• Status: active or suspended.

From a row's More menu:

• Open inbox opens the mail view inside your dashboard.
• App passwords manages the passwords used by outside mail apps.
• Suspend stops the mailbox sending and receiving without deleting anything. Activate turns it back on.
• Delete removes the mailbox for good.

Using the inbox

Pick Open inbox on a mailbox and the dashboard hands the whole screen over to your mail. It's laid out in three columns: your folders on the left, the message list in the middle, and whatever you're reading on the right.

Reading

• Click a folder to switch to it. Unread counts sit beside each name.
• The search box above the list searches the folder you're in.
• Click a message to open it in the reading pane. If it's part of a conversation, the whole thread is shown with the message you picked expanded.
• Attachments appear at the bottom of a message. Click one to download it.

Acting on a message

The buttons above a message give you Reply, Reply all and Forward, all of which open the composer with the quoting already done. Alongside them:

• The star marks a message so you can find it again.
• The open-envelope icon marks it unread and returns you to the list.
• The archive icon files it away.
• The bin moves it to trash.

In your drafts folder the buttons change to Edit and Discard instead.

Writing a message

Click Compose at the top left, or reply to something.

1. Fill in To, and Cc or Bcc if you need them. Separate several addresses with commas.
2. Write a Subject.
3. Write the message. The editor gives you basic formatting, and your signature is already there if you've set one.
4. Click Attach to add files. Keep the total modest, since very large attachments are refused.
5. Click Send, or Save draft to come back to it later.

Mailbox settings

Click Settings at the bottom of the folder list:

• Auto-reply. Turn it on, give it a subject and a message, and anyone who writes to you gets it back automatically. Ideal while you're on tour or off the grid.
• Signature. Added to the bottom of every new message you compose.

Click Save and both apply straight away.

Reading this mail somewhere else

If you'd rather use the mail app on your phone or laptop, open a mailbox's App passwords and click Generate app password. The password appears once, so copy it there and then, and use it with the server details shown in the same dialog.

Each app password is listed with when it was last used, and each has two buttons:

• Rotate replaces it with a new one. The old one stops working immediately, so update the app that was using it.
• Revoke deletes it. Use this the moment a device goes missing.

Keep one password per device and you can cut off a single phone without disturbing anything else.

Where to go next

• Want your campaigns to come from this domain too? See sending settings.
• Ready to write to your whole list rather than one person? See sending an email.
• Want text messages as well as mail? See messaging.