Envelope From Domain Setup

  • Updated

Every email your platform sends travels inside a digital envelope. The Envelope From domain - a subdomain dedicated to email routing, like mailer.company.com - is the return address on that envelope. It's separate from the From address recipients see in their inbox. You set this up once when you first stand up your Act-On account, and rarely touch it again.

Who does this: Marketing picks the subdomain and owns the outcome. IT publishes the DNS records. Act-On Support completes the setup at the end
Time needed: 15 to 20 minutes of active work, plus waiting on DNS propagation (up to 24 hours) and Support confirmation
Why this matters: The envelope domain is how receiving mail servers route your messages and check that they're genuine. Without a properly configured one, your entire sending infrastructure looks suspicious to ISPs and campaigns underperform or bounce. Get it right once and you build a durable sender reputation on a subdomain that's insulated from your main website.
In plain English: Think of it like physical mail. The envelope has one return address (for bounces and routing) and the letter inside has another (the From name your reader sees). We're setting up the envelope side.
Quick Reference (Advanced Users) - Click to Expand

Choose a dedicated email-only subdomain (for example, mailer.company.com). Publish two records against it:

  • TXT (SPF): v=spf1 include:_spf.act-on.net -all
  • MX: est-mta.b2b-mail.net (priority 10)

Then submit the support ticket at the bottom of this page.

Create your Envelope domain and set up SPF

You need SPF (Sender Policy Framework) on this domain so Act-On can send email on your behalf. See What is SPF? for why SPF matters for deliverability.

Work with your mail or IT team to:

  1. Decide on a subdomain to use for your email envelope (for example, mailer.company.com).
    • This subdomain is for email only. Don't attach it to any other website.
    • If you have multiple root domains, create this subdomain on the one with the healthiest email reputation.
  2. Create two new records in DNS on this subdomain:
    1. TXT record: v=spf1 include:_spf.act-on.net -all
    2. MX record pointing to est-mta.b2b-mail.net with priority 10.
  3. Continue to the support ticket below.
Important: Setup is not finished until you submit the support ticket below.

Send in a support ticket for Envelope Domain

Once the TXT and MX records are published, submit the form below so our support team can finish the configuration on the Act-On side.

Envelope Domain setup form

Support will reply to confirm that setup is complete.

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