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Deliverability

Email deliverability: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC explained

Deliverability is whether your email actually reaches the inbox instead of the spam folder — or nowhere at all. The foundation is authentication: three DNS records that let receiving servers verify your mail is genuinely from your domain. Get these right and your inbox placement improves immediately.

SPF — who is allowed to send

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a DNS record listing the servers permitted to send email for your domain. When a server receives your message, it checks the sending IP against this list.

SPF is a single TXT record on your domain, for example:

v=spf1 include:_spf.mailee.email ~all

If you already have an SPF record, don't add a second one — merge the include: into your existing record. A domain may only have one SPF record.

DKIM — a tamper-proof signature

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds a cryptographic signature to every message. The receiver fetches your public key from DNS and verifies the signature, proving the email wasn't altered in transit and really came from your domain.

Mailee gives you a CNAME (or TXT) record to add. Once it resolves, every email you send is signed automatically — there's nothing more to do.

DMARC — your policy and your reports

DMARC ties SPF and DKIM together. It tells inboxes what to do with mail that fails authentication, and sends you reports on who is sending email as your domain.

Start in monitoring mode so you can watch without affecting delivery:

v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain.com

Once you've confirmed your legitimate mail passes, tighten the policy to p=quarantine and eventually p=reject to stop spoofers using your domain.

Setting it up in Mailee

  1. Go to Settings → Sending → Domain.
  2. Mailee shows the exact SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for your domain.
  3. Add them at your DNS provider (the host where you bought your domain).
  4. Click Verify. DNS can take from a few minutes to a few hours to propagate.

Beyond authentication

Authentication gets you eligible for the inbox; engagement keeps you there. Send to people who want your email, keep a clean list (Mailee suppresses bounced and unsubscribed addresses automatically), warm up gradually, and avoid spam-trigger content. See How to stay out of the spam folder.

The one-line version: add SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, then send mail people actually open. Everything else is detail.