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Set up email sending

Send campaign email from your own domain. Set up your sending identity once, publish a few DNS records, and verify before your first send.

Together sends your emails from your organisation's own domain - not a shared platform address. That keeps your deliverability reputation yours alone, and it's what mailbox providers like Gmail and Outlook expect from serious senders. Before your first campaign, you set up a sending identity and prove you control the domain you'll send from.

Before you start

You need:

Add your sending domain

Go to Settings -> Email sending and enter the domain your emails will come from. Adding your first domain automatically sets up your organisation's own isolated sending account - your reputation is never shared with other organisations. To add another domain later, choose Add domain at the top of the page.

A dedicated subdomain of your main domain is best practice - for example mail.yourorg.org.au if your website is yourorg.org.au.

Together then shows you the exact DNS records to publish - a DKIM record (proves the email really came from you), a DMARC record if your domain doesn't already have one (required, see below), and, depending on your setup, a separate return-path record for bounces. Add each one with your DNS provider, copied exactly as shown.

Verify

Once the records are published, you can close the page. Together re-checks every pending domain every few minutes and emails your organisation's admins as soon as it verifies. If you'd rather not wait, choose Check verification to check straight away - DNS changes can take a little while to propagate, so a record showing "Not found" usually just means it hasn't spread yet.

Bulk sending stays locked until every record verifies. You can still send a test email to yourself beforehand: while your domain is unverified, Send test to me sends a preview from Together's shared demo address, marked [DEMO] in the subject so it's clear it isn't from your organisation yet. This demo preview has no unsubscribe link - that's expected, it isn't a real list send. Once your domain verifies, the same button switches automatically to sending from your own address, with no [DEMO] stamp.

If verification fails

If the records can't be found for long enough, checking stops and the domain shows Verification failed. Choosing Check verification won't restart it. This almost always means a record was never published, or was published with a typo.

Together tells you what it found - a record that was never published reads differently from one with a typo in its value - so start there. Compare the records in the table against what your DNS provider actually has, fix any difference, then choose Add this domain again. That restarts verification using the same DKIM record you've already published, so there is nothing new to publish. We'll email your admins either way - when it verifies, or if it fails again.

While a domain isn't verified, Together also looks up its DNS for you. When the lookup finds something useful, the card shows it under the records table: your DNS host, when Together recognises it, and the exact value to type in its host field, shown relative to your domain, such as tg-abc123._domainkey. The Host column in the table shows that same value, so you can copy it straight from there. If a DKIM or DMARC record has been published at a name with your domain on the end twice, such as tg-abc123._domainkey.yourorg.org.au.yourorg.org.au, the card says where it found the record and what the host should be. Change the host on that record to the one shown.

Each domain can belong to only one organisation on Together. If adding a domain says it can't be added, contact Together and we'll sort it out.

Remove a domain

Your organisation can hold up to five sending domains. To remove one you no longer use, choose Remove domain on its card and confirm. This works for any domain, verified or not, and frees its place so you can add another.

Once a domain is removed, email can no longer be sent from it. If you add it again later, you'll get a new DKIM record to publish, and it starts again with the low daily sending limit a new domain gets.

You can't remove a domain while a send from it is preparing, scheduled, sending or paused. Wait for the send to finish, or cancel it, then remove the domain.

DMARC is required

A DMARC record is required - Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook reject bulk mail from domains without one, so your domain won't finish verifying until DMARC is in place. Together checks for one when you add the domain. If your domain already has DMARC, there is nothing to do and the table doesn't list it. Otherwise the table shows it from the start. The minimal record is a TXT record at _dmarc.yourdomain with the value v=DMARC1; p=none (your DNS provider will call this "adding a TXT record"). p=none is a monitoring-only policy that changes nothing about your existing mail - you can tighten it later.

Confirm your sending permission

Alongside your domain on Settings -> Email sending, you'll see a Sending permission panel. An admin ticks this once to confirm that the people you email are supporters you already have a relationship with, and that your messages are the kind you're entitled to send them. Together relies on this confirmation to know your supporters are reachable.

Until it's confirmed, no send can start: the preflight list says your sending permission hasn't been confirmed, and Start sending stays disabled. Confirm it before you build your first campaign. Read the statement, then choose I attest to the above. If your circumstances change, you can withdraw it at any time from the same panel; a fresh confirmation is a new record, and Together keeps the history.

Withdrawing it stops sending too. A send that has nobody lined up yet stops with a message saying so, and one that already has people lined up stops including anyone it hasn't reached - the people already emailed are unaffected.

Choose who it goes to

When you open the Send tab on an email, Who it goes to offers four audiences:

The last three need Grow or above. A tag audience is worked out when the send starts, not when you pick it, so anyone tagged in between is included - and anyone untagged is left out.

Donors who have opted out, asked not to be contacted, or have no email address are always left out, whichever audience you pick.