See a full sample report
This is an example report for a made-up business, so you can see what you get.
Oak Street Rentals is a made-up property manager. Its rent reminders, invoices and newsletter go out from Outlook, QuickBooks, Mailchimp and its website. Here's the report it would get after sending one test email from each.
Rather not do this yourself? Forward the report to whoever looks after your website. The steps for them are in the last section, click by click.
Your tools
Every tool that sends email for the business, each confirmed by a test email.
Emails from your mailbox are set up properly. Nothing to do.
QuickBooks sends invoices from its own address, so some inboxes are wary of them. Two things work:
Your newsletters are going out, but your domain’s settings don’t say Mailchimp is allowed to send for you. Some inboxes put that in junk.
- Log in to Mailchimp and open Domains.
- Click Authenticate next to your domain.
- Copy the settings it shows into where your domain is managed (often GoDaddy, Cloudflare or your web host).
- Back in Mailchimp, click Verify. Then send another test email to check it worked.
Messages from your website form are sent by the company that hosts your website, and your domain's settings don't say it's allowed to send for you. So “New message” emails can land in junk, even in your own inbox, and you can miss a customer.
- Forward this to whoever looks after your website. The steps for them are in the last section.
- Once they've made the change, fill in your website form yourself to send another test.
Who's sending email as Oak Street Rentals
From the daily reports Gmail, Outlook and others send about your domain, over the first week.
The reports show 10 emails sent in your name from a server we can't match to any of your tools. We can see that it happened, not why. Common causes are a tool someone set up and forgot about, an email forwarding service, or someone pretending to be you.
- Ask whoever looks after your website or email if they set up anything new recently.
- If nobody recognizes it, tell us. We'll help you turn on protection so fake emails in your name get blocked, one safe step at a time.
Spam blocklists
Lists that email services check before they accept your email.
We checked the spam blocklists email services use most. Oak Street Rentals isn't on any of them. If that ever changes, we email you.
For your IT person or web developer
Click-by-click steps for each change. The domain is managed at GoDaddy (in this example). Nothing needs a password from us, and nothing changes until you make the change.
- Log in to Mailchimp as an admin. Click your profile picture, then Account & billing, then Domains.
- Next to the business domain, click Authenticate. Mailchimp lists two or three records, each with a Type (usually CNAME), a Name and a Value. Keep that page open.
- In a new tab, log in to GoDaddy. Open My Products, find the domain, and click DNS.
- For each record Mailchimp listed: click Add New Record, pick the same Type, then copy the Name and the Value exactly. Enter only the part of the Name before the domain.
- Click Save.
- Go back to Mailchimp and click Verify. If it can't find the records yet, wait 30 minutes and try again.
- Ask the owner to send another test from Mailchimp to their test address to confirm.
- Find how the form sends email. On WordPress, it's usually the server's built-in mail function unless an SMTP plugin is set up.
- Set the form to send through the business's Microsoft 365 account or an email sending service, using an SMTP plugin or the form tool's own email settings. Use an address on the business's domain as the From address.
- If the sending service asks you to add records to the domain, add them in the DNS settings exactly as it shows.
- Fill in the website form yourself, using the owner's test address as your email, to confirm it now passes.
- QuickBooks sends invoices from its own address, so there's no DNS record to add for it.
- If the owner connects a Gmail address on the business domain in QuickBooks, make sure Google's email signing (DKIM) is turned on for the domain: admin.google.com, then Apps, Google Workspace, Gmail, Authenticate email.
Then, a short email every week
With monitoring, this lands in your inbox every week. You hear from us straight away if something breaks.
Nothing to do this week. We'll email you straight away if anything changes.
Example only. Oak Street Rentals is a made-up business.