Guided DNS setup

Let Sendly publish your domain's DNS records for you, and get told when one of them disappears

Publishing DKIM, MAIL FROM and DMARC records by hand is the step where most domains stall — a typo in a CNAME, a record added to the wrong zone, or a trailing dot in the wrong place, and the domain never verifies. Guided setup removes the copying and pasting: Sendly hands the exact record set to a DNS connect flow that either writes the records into your zone for you or walks you through your own provider's interface, one record at a time.

Guided setup is powered by DoDomain, and it also keeps watching your zone after setup finishes, so a record that quietly disappears months later becomes a notification instead of a mystery bounce.

Availability

Guided setup only appears when it is enabled on the deployment you're using. It is on for Sendly Cloud. A self-hosted Sendly needs a DODOMAIN_SECRET_KEY (and DODOMAIN_WEBHOOK_SECRET for drift monitoring) configured — without them no button is drawn at all, and the manual record path is the only path. If the feature is turned off after a session was started, Sendly reports "Guided DNS setup is not available on this deployment."

Starting guided setup

Add the domain

In your project settings, open the Domains tab and add your domain in the Add Domain card. Sendly creates the SES sending identity, generates the DKIM tokens, and expands the record table for the new domain straight away.

Choose the automatic path

On a domain you have just added, the record table opens with a callout at the top:

Let us publish these records for you We'll take you through your DNS provider and add every record below — no copying and pasting.

Press Set up automatically to start. I'll do it manually dismisses the callout for that domain and leaves you with the copy-paste table.

You can also start the flow at any time from the Guided setup button in the header of the record table — it sits next to the DNS Configuration Required / View DNS Records toggle.

Read the provider hint

Before you commit, Sendly runs a free pre-flight against your domain's nameservers and prints a small hint under the Guided setup button:

Hint	What it means
`One-click available · Cloudflare`	Your zone is on a provider Sendly can write every record to. Authorize the connection and you're done.
`Guided steps`	Sendly can't write to this provider, so the flow shows step-by-step instructions for your specific DNS host instead.

The hint is deliberate: "one-click" promised and not delivered is worse than never promising it. The pre-flight only reads your nameservers — it creates nothing and costs nothing.

Complete the flow

The connect flow opens in a sheet over the dashboard, themed to match it. If your browser blocks the embed (a content blocker, a strict CSP, an offline tab), Sendly opens the same flow in a new tab instead — nothing is lost. When the flow finishes it returns you to your Domains settings.

Let Sendly re-check the domain

As soon as the records land, Sendly re-checks the domain against Amazon SES automatically. The Verified badge flips when SES confirms the DKIM records — not when the connect flow says it published them.

What guided setup publishes

The record set is the same one the records table shows, in the same order — there is no second, hidden prescription:

the 3 DKIM CNAMEs at <token>._domainkey.yourdomain.com
the custom MAIL FROM MX and SPF TXT at sendly.yourdomain.com
the DMARC TXT at _dmarc.yourdomain.com (v=DMARC1; p=none;)
the inbound MX at your root domain, but only when your project uses Sendly mailboxes

Your existing email is never taken over

The root-domain MX record is the one record in the set that could redirect your company's existing email (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365). Guided setup only ever writes it when Sendly mailboxes are configured for the deployment — the legacy inbound-email MX stays a copy-paste row you opt into deliberately, and is never automated. See receiving emails.

One-click versus guided steps

Sendly asks DoDomain which tier your DNS provider qualifies for, and only the top tier is treated as automatic:

Cloudflare (one-click). You authorize the connection against your Cloudflare account and the full record set — CNAME, MX, TXT — is written into your zone for you.
Every other provider (guided steps). The flow identifies your provider and shows the records with instructions written for that provider's control panel. You still paste the values, but into the right screen with the right field names.

Providers that support Domain Connect fall into the second group on purpose. Domain Connect's automated templates can only carry a single CNAME or a verification TXT — they can never write MX, SPF, DKIM or DMARC, and every record Sendly prescribes is one of those.

Drift monitoring

After a successful connection, DoDomain keeps checking the records it published. Sendly's own resolver sweep runs every six hours; drift monitoring is what watches the zone in between.

When a record that was resolving stops resolving:

an amber DNS Drift chip appears in the domain's DNS Health row, beside the DKIM / SPF / DMARC / MAIL FROM chips. Its tooltip reads: "A record you published stopped resolving. Open the DNS records below and re-publish the ones that no longer match."
a Domain DNS Drift Detected notification is sent to the project's members — in the notification bell and as a push, deep-linked to the Domains settings — and to your operators' alert channel.
a Re-check DNS button appears next to Guided setup in the record table header.
Guided setup is offered again, even on a domain that is already verified, so you can re-publish the missing records the same way you published them the first time.

Drift is not the same as unverified

Drift never changes the Verified badge. Amazon SES is the only authority on verification, and SES may still consider the identity verified at that moment because of DNS caching and TTLs. Drift is an early warning that a record went missing — act on it before SES notices and sending starts failing.

Re-check DNS

Re-check DNS asks DoDomain to look at your zone again right now instead of waiting for its next scheduled pass. It is a request, not an answer: the check runs on their side and the verdict arrives a moment later, which is why the confirmation reads "Re-check started — we'll update the status automatically." The chip clears itself once the records resolve again.

Asking twice in quick succession is refused with "This domain was just re-checked. Give DoDomain a few minutes before asking again." — a wait, not a failure.

Troubleshooting

The Guided setup button isn't there

Three reasons, in order of likelihood:

The domain is already verified and healthy. There is nothing to guide, so the button is hidden. It comes back if the domain drifts.
The deployment doesn't have guided setup enabled. Self-hosted installs need DoDomain credentials — see the callout at the top of this page.
The record table is collapsed. The button lives in the record table header; expand DNS Configuration Required / View DNS Records to see it.

"A guided setup session was just started for this domain"

Each domain can only start one session per minute. This is a double-click guard, not a limit on how many times you may use the feature — wait a moment and press the button again.

The sheet didn't open, or opened in a new tab

The connect flow is an embedded frame, and content blockers, corporate proxies and strict browser settings can prevent it from mounting. Sendly detects that and opens the same flow as a full page in a new tab. The flow is identical; finish it there.

Guided setup finished but the domain still says Pending

Publishing a record and a receiver seeing it are different events. DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate, and SES will not flip the domain to Verified until it reads the DKIM records itself. Use the refresh button on the domain row to re-check, and see records not verifying if it stays pending past that.