If you already have domains ready for sending emails, you can still use CustomerOS to setup mailboxes, manage DNS and monitor deliverability for you as part of our Mailstack product.

For CustomerOS to manage your DNS and make changes without you needing to manually change anything, we have built an integration with Cloudflare. The following steps will make sure that you are ready to integrate your domains with CustomerOS and carry out the integration.

We know you’re excited to use Mailstack for your domain, but here’s an important note: you can’t combine it with other email providers on the same domain, otherwise you might encounter some issues. This setup isn’t meant for your main email address or primary domain either. To ensure everything runs smoothly and avoids any DNS mix-ups or downtime, we recommend using a separate domain specifically for Mailstack. That way, no overlaps happen, and everything works as it should!

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1. Check your DNS provider

The reason we have chosen to partner with Cloudflare to provide this service is they provide programmatic access to control DNS settings, as well as doing this under a free plan for all required functionality required to run, monitor and maintain deliverabilty through Mailstack.

If you are not currently with Cloudflare you should sign up for an account, unless you are using enterprise features you should find all services included in their generous free plan.

If you are unsure which DNS provider you are with, you can easily check through your domain registrar where your nameservers are. If you don’t have access to your domain registrar, you can use these two methods:

  1. Use a tool like MXToolbox or DNS Checker.
  2. Check from your terminal on OSX or Linux using dig example.com where in this example you would return example.com’s DNS settings.

These methods will return the DNS nameserver, and if it doesn’t look like evelyn.ns.cloudflare.com or norm.ns.cloudflare.com then you will need to migrate your domain’s DNS over to Cloudflare from the provider in the domain.

If you require help to understand your current DNS setup don’t hesitate to reach out to CustomerOS support.

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2. Prepare your domain with Cloudflare

After creating a Cloudflare account follow the prompts after clicking the + Add a Domain button on the main page under the Domains tab to migrate your domain DNS to Cloudflare.

Using DNSSEC to protect your domains? You will need to make sure you have disabled DNSSEC 48 hours before migrating if you have it enabled, and reenable 24 hours after changing your nameservers to Cloudflare. DNSSEC is used to prevent unwanted attacks through DNS redirects and as such has a grace period that needs to be waited out.

DNS may take up to 24 hours for the updates to which nameservers your domain uses to fully propagate globally. You can continue with the next steps but please be aware that some issues may occur while these changes are made to global internet routing.

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3. Create Cloudflare API token

To give access to CustomerOS to manage specific domains for you, you should generate a Cloudflare token from the Cloudflare dashboard using this link. The link will prefill the required scopes for your review, as well as allowing you to specify the Cloudflare zones (essentially domains) that you want CustomerOS to manage.

CustomerOS won’t do anything with the domains you specify, however it is good practice to limit access only to the domains you wish to use with Mailstack.

Once you have generated a token with the link, you should then add it to CustomerOS via the settings page.

Using the token, CustomerOS will identify which domains are suitable for configuring Mailstack on. Select the domains you want to use for Mailstack and then provide the 2 usernames of the mailboxes you would like to send email from (such as matt@ and matt.brown@) and the redirect of your domain to your primary domain.

That’s it! You now have configured your own domain to be managed by CustomerOS. You will have constant monitoring for deliverability issues and automatic updates to your domain to maintain great deliverability automatically!

Happy sending!