DNS Records

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In order to approve Samba for sending emails on behalf of your chosen sender, you have to set it as your e-mail service provider by setting your DNS records correctly.

DNS records are used for the validation of your domain. The DNS settings can usually be found in the administration of your domain hosting. These records are inscribed into the header of the e-mail. Thanks to the correct DNS records settings, the e-mail is much less likely to end up in SPAM.

Which DNS records Samba needs

Samba requires DKIM and SPF records as anti-spam protection. The specific form of these records can be found in Settings – E-mailing integration. It’s also recommended to set up an MX record.

In addition to these records, the MX record – “Mail eXchanger” – is also required by the most used email service providers (such as Seznam.cz). This record specifies which server should receive the reply to an email sent from a given address. This should be checked especially if you are using a sending subdomain (e.g. info@newsletter.eshop.cz), as the MX record is by default resolved only for the main domain and not the subdomain (eshop.cz vs newsletter.eshop.cz).

We also highly recommend setting up a DMARC record, which will be required by Gmail and Yahoo for all bulk senders in 2024. Please see our article for a detailed description of this record.

DNS records settings

DNS setting is a part of the administration of your web hosting.

SPF

• If your domain doesn’t have any SPF record (TXT type, that starts with “v=spf1…”), create a new one with values displayed in the Samba app.
• If your domain has already an SPF record, Samba shows you the final form of the record. For example, if your current SPF record looks like this:
  

  v=spf1 a mx include:your.old.record.com ~all

  After the edit, it should look like this:

  v=spf1 a mx include:your.old.record.com include:mailgun.org~all

• It is allowed to have a maximum of 10 lookups.
  • The limit is set according to the generally accepted RFC specification.
  • You can easily check the number of lookups on your domain, e.g. using the MxToolbox tool.
  • If this limit is exceeded, Samba will display that you do not have an SPF record correctly and the desired value will be displayed as the desired value regardless of the current state of your SPF record.
    • If you exceed the Lookup limit, we recommend contacting your IT department. The standard solution is to create a new subdomain. For example “myeshop.cz” does not meet the limit, so “mail.myeshop.cz” is created
  • It is recommended to have a maximum of 2 so-called void lookups = lookup that is empty.
  • If you need help fixing your SPF record, please do not hesitate to contact our support team.

DKIM

• Create a new TXT record with values displayed in the Samba app.

MX

• If you do not have any MX record set up on the sending domain yet, you need to set up a redirect to a server where you will be able to receive replies sent to your newsletters.
• The specific value to set must be provided by your mail server administrator.

DMARC

• For the purposes of meeting the current requirements from Gmail and Yahoo, it is sufficient to select the p=none policy. In practice, your DMARC record might look like this:

  _dmarc.example.com. IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=none;" 

   

  • just replace “example.com” with your sender domain

• If you want to set a stricter policy, or want to analyze DMARC reports of unauthenticated mail, check out our article.

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