Sending Email From Your Own Domain | Email & Marketing | Crafted Call
Sending Email From Your Own Domain
Gallery OwnersUpdated Jul 16, 2026
Every email Crafted Call sends for your gallery — submission receipts, payout notices, event reminders, and marketing campaigns — already carries your gallery's branding. By default those messages leave from a shared Crafted Call sending address. If you'd rather have them come from your own domain (for example no-reply@yourgallery.org), you can verify a sending identity yourself in a few minutes plus a little DNS setup.
This guide explains how your gallery's email is sent today, why you might want your own verified domain, and exactly how to set one up.
How Your Gallery's Email Is Sent Today
Crafted Call resolves the branding and From address for both transactional email and marketing campaigns through a single, shared resolver, so your messages look consistent everywhere.
Branding. When your gallery has a logo, your emails show that logo. If you haven't uploaded one yet, your gallery's name appears as text instead — your messages are never branded with the Crafted Call logo. (Account and security emails, such as password resets, are the one exception: those come from Crafted Call itself.) See Organization Branding & Custom Labels to set your logo and colors.
From name. Recipients see your gallery's name (or a custom "From name" you set in Marketing → Settings → Defaults).
From address. Until you verify your own domain, email is sent from a Crafted Call address tied to your gallery — something like no-reply+yourgallery@craftedcall.com. The display name is still yours, but the underlying address is on Crafted Call's shared domain.
Replies. Replies route back to your gallery's contact email, so conversations still land with you.
In short: your branding is already yours. Verifying your own domain changes the sending address so the whole message — not just the name on it — comes from you.
Why Verify Your Own Domain
Better deliverability. Mail signed with your own domain's DKIM keys and aligned SPF is far less likely to be filtered into spam.
Authenticity and trust. Recipients (and their mail providers) see a From address at your real domain instead of a shared one.
Required for campaigns. Marketing campaigns will not send until your gallery has a verified sending identity. Transactional email keeps working either way, but campaigns are gated on it (more below).
Before You Start
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You'll need:
Owner or Admin access to your gallery (or a team member with the Marketing role). Sending settings live in the Marketing area.
Access to your domain's DNS at whatever registrar or DNS host manages it (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Google Domains, and so on).
The right email address. Verify the address your gallery already uses as its contact / From address — the one set as your organization email. That is the address both campaigns and "on behalf of" transactional emails send from, so verifying that address is what flips your email over to your own domain.
Sending domain vs. website domain. This is different from a Custom Domain for your public gallery site. A custom domain changes the web address visitors see; a verified sending identity changes the address your email comes from. You can set up either one independently.
Add and Verify a Sending Identity
Go to Marketing → Settings and open the Sender tab.
Under Add sending identity, enter the email address you want to send from (for example no-reply@yourgallery.org) and click Add identity.
A verification email from our email service (AWS SES) is sent to that address. Open the inbox and click the link to confirm you control the address. This step usually completes within 1–5 minutes.
Back on the Sender tab, open the identity's DNS records panel (the copy icon in the Actions column). You'll see records to add at your DNS provider:
DKIM CNAME records (usually three) — these let recipients cryptographically verify your mail.
An SPF TXT record — authorizes our service to send for your domain.
A DMARC TXT record — a starter policy you can tighten later.
Use the copy buttons next to each value and paste them into your DNS host exactly.
Wait for DNS to propagate and verification to complete. The tab auto-checks every 30 seconds, and you can press the Refresh button to pull the latest status from SES at any time. DNS changes can take up to 72 hours to fully propagate, though they're often much faster.
You're fully set up when the identity shows a green Verified badge and a DKIM OK badge. Both matter — DKIM is what protects your deliverability. Crafted Call also re-checks pending identities automatically in the background, so a status that hasn't gone green yet will often update on its own once DNS catches up.
Understanding the Three DNS Records
The Sender tab hands you three kinds of records. You don't need to be a DNS expert — just copy each one into your provider — but here's what they do:
DKIM (CNAME records). These publish your domain's signing keys. With them in place, receiving mail servers can confirm a message really came from you and wasn't tampered with. This is the single most important factor for staying out of spam, which is why a verified identity isn't "ready" until DKIM shows Success.
SPF (TXT record). Lists the servers allowed to send mail for your domain so receivers can reject spoofed mail claiming to be from you.
DMARC (TXT record). Ties SPF and DKIM together and tells receivers what to do with mail that fails both. The starter policy is intentionally permissive (p=none) so nothing breaks while you set up; you can tighten it later once you're confident everything is signing correctly.
If your domain already has an SPF or DMARC record from another email tool, merge the values rather than adding a second record of the same type — most providers only honor one SPF and one DMARC record per domain.
Send Yourself a Test
Once an identity is verified, a Send test email action appears for it. Use it to send a test message from your new address to yourself and confirm everything looks right in a real inbox before you rely on it.
What Changes Once You're Verified
When your gallery's send address is verified with DKIM ready:
Transactional email (receipts, notifications, reminders) sends on behalf of your gallery from your own address instead of the shared Crafted Call address.
Marketing campaigns send from the same verified address.
Replies continue routing to your gallery's contact email.
Your branding, From name, and templates don't change — only the underlying sending address improves. For more on how campaigns and templates are composed, see Email Campaign Basics and Building Email Templates.
Here's the practical difference recipients see:
Before verifying: From "Your Gallery" at a shared Crafted Call address (e.g. no-reply+yourgallery@craftedcall.com).
After verifying: From "Your Gallery" at your own address (e.g. no-reply@yourgallery.org), signed with your domain's DKIM.
The name in the inbox is the same; what improves is the address behind it and the authentication that travels with every message.
Sending Campaigns Requires a Verified Sender
Before any campaign goes out, Crafted Call runs a preflight checklist. One of those checks is Verified sender identity: if your gallery's From address has no verified identity with DKIM ready, the campaign is blocked from sending to protect your sending reputation. You'll see a message such as:
"No verified sender identity for <address>. Verify this exact sender address in Marketing → Settings → Sender before sending campaigns." — add and verify that address as described above.
"Sender identity DKIM is still propagating. Wait for the DKIM status to reach Success…" — your address is verified but DKIM hasn't gone green yet. Give DNS time, then press Refresh.
Transactional email is not blocked in this way — it simply falls back to the shared Crafted Call address until your own domain is verified.
Removing or Replacing an Identity
You can remove a sending identity from the Sender tab using the trash icon. When you do, any transactional and campaign email that was sending from that address falls back to the Crafted Call default address until a new identity is verified. Removing an identity can't be undone, but you can always re-add and re-verify the same address later.
Troubleshooting
The verification email never arrived. Check spam and junk folders for the address you entered. Re-submitting the same address from the Add form re-sends the verification email, so you can trigger it again. Make sure the inbox actually exists and can receive mail.
DKIM is stuck on "pending" or "not started." This almost always means the DKIM CNAME records aren't in DNS yet, or were entered with a typo. Re-open the DNS records panel, confirm each record matches exactly (hosts and values both), and remember propagation can take up to 72 hours. Press Refresh to re-check.
The identity shows "Verification failed." SES couldn't verify the address. Confirm the address is spelled correctly and the inbox is reachable, then remove the identity and add it again.
My campaign won't send. Open the campaign's preflight checklist. If the Verified sender identity check is failing, verify your gallery's From address (and wait for DKIM to reach Success). Note there's also a separate "Sender domain" advisory check — that one only warns and won't block your send.
I verified an address but transactional email still uses the Crafted Call address. Make sure the address you verified is the same one set as your organization email / From address. The system sends "on behalf of" your gallery only when your configured contact address is the verified one.
Next Steps
Email Campaign Basics — Create and send your first campaign once your sender is verified.
