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we are trying to automate outgoing emails for our SaaS product. Currently, each customer is required to configure their own smtp server which are used to send emails from their account (and from their domain), but we are looking at automating this in our product platform.

  1. Each customer should be able to send emails "from" their own domain. The from address should be a domain address of the user.
  2. We can get an account created with a transactional email provider like mailgun or sendgrid, and use that account to send email for all of our customers. However, we need to sign all emails with our domain. Due to DMARC, this can pose deliverability issues. Moreover, even if one customer mis-ueses, reputability of the sending domain (our own domain) is lost --which might affect all our customers.

It is not practical to ask each customer to verify their own domain using DNS verification.

What are the best practices while sending domains in a SaaS set up where the email should be sent from the customer's domain?

Raj
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1 Answers1

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"What are the best practices while sending domains in a SaaS set up where the email should be sent from the customer's domain?"

I'm not certain if by "It is not practical to ask each customer to verify their own domain using DNS verification." you mean a) verify their domain with the ESP (Email Service Provider, i.e. SendGrid, Mailgun, etc.) or b) ensure each customer has a proper TXT SPF DNS record that allows the ESP being used to send email on the domains behalf.

Regardless, even if it seems impractical, you'll want to minimally have b) done. You'll need to stress the importance to your customers that a proper SPF record is in place. You could write a simple tool to help them get one that would work. If you have to, explain the importance of a proper SPF record for email delivery is like having a proper A or CNAME record pointing to the correct host for their website. If not setup properly and correctly people won't get their content (they won't get to their website in the CNAME/A record case and they won't get their emails delivered to their users in the SPF record case).

It sounds like you are looking for a solution similar to the company I work for has/does. We sell SaaS and utilize SendGrid for our ESP. For each of our customers we setup a separate Subuser. We set the "from" address to be that of our customers and for the most part it works. We stress to our customers that they should create a SPF record in their DNS records if possible to ensure better deliverability. Some of our customers use email addresses such as lastname.firstname@hotmail.com Unfortunately when they don't use a custom domain, particularly one of the major email providers, their mail often gets dropped by their provider or goes to SPAM since the major players have DNS records that don't allow/authorize ESP's to deliver on their behalf.

Justin Steele
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  • Thanks for your response. I am referring to both steps. Verifying with ESP and then adding SPF records. There are several SaaS products that let a customer send emails from their domain without verifying the domain. Partly because customer has already validated their email with the vendor. Of course the email is signed by a domain owned by the product vendor. How can I achieve this and what are the pros and cons of this? – Raj Feb 17 '16 at 13:28
  • @Raj, please see my addition to my answer. With SendGrid we don't need our customers to verify/validate their email. – Justin Steele Feb 17 '16 at 16:01
  • Thanks for your response. That's more like what we want to - we also have customers that do not have their domain. When you say we can add a subuser, is the subuser added with our customer's domain? Will I able to use the sub user (customer's domain) to send emails without having to verify the domain? – Raj Feb 19 '16 at 17:06