Verifying your sending domain — Help

When you reply to a lead or 1pm sends a lead acknowledgement on your behalf, that email goes out from a 1pm address by default. It works perfectly well, but it does not say your business. Verify your own sending domain and every lead email leaves from an address at your domain instead, for example [email protected]. Your brand is on the envelope, and replies still come back to you exactly as before.

This is a one-time setup: add a few DNS records, verify, done.

Before you start

You need to be able to add DNS records for your domain. That means access to your domain registrar or DNS provider (wherever you bought or manage the domain), not just your website. If someone else manages your DNS, you can hand them the records from this page to add.

Set it up

Open the top right menu, choose Account, then Profile, and open Lead sending domain.
Under From address, enter the address you want lead mail to come from, for example [email protected]. 1pm uses its domain to set up verification. Click Set up verification.
1pm shows you a set of DNS records to add. Each one has a name (or host) and a value, both with a Copy button so you do not have to retype them. An MX record also has a priority, shown as its own copyable field because most DNS hosts ask for it separately.
Add those records at your DNS host, using the exact name and value shown.
Come back and click Verify domain.

Most DNS hosts apply new records within a few minutes, though some take a few hours. Until the records are in place and verified, lead mail keeps sending from the default 1pm address, so nothing ever fails to deliver while you wait.

Checking progress

Each record shows its own status so you can see how far along you are, and the three labels mean different things:

Found. The record is published and matches what we asked for. Nothing more to do.
Not found yet. We looked and it is not there. Usually your DNS host has not published it yet, so give it time and verify again.
Not matching. The record is there, but its value is not the one shown on this page. That is a typo or a value that got cut short, and waiting will not fix it. Copy the value again and replace what you added.

After you click Verify, the check runs in the background, so the labels can take a moment to catch up with it. A record you have only just added can take longer still.

Once everything checks out, the page confirms your domain is verified and shows the address your lead mail now sends from.

Changing or removing it

Change the address. You can change the part before the @ any time (say from enquiries@ to hello@) without re-verifying, as long as it is the same domain. Just update the From address and save.
Move to a different domain. Entering an address on a new domain starts verification again from the beginning. 1pm registers the new domain, gives you a fresh set of DNS records to add, and only lets go of the old one once the new one is registered. Your existing domain keeps sending until that swap goes through, so if the new domain cannot be registered, nothing changes and you can simply try again.
Remove it. Removing your sending domain reverts lead mail to the default 1pm address straight away, so nothing breaks. It also unregisters the domain, so if you want it back later you will need to add the DNS records a second time. If our email provider can't be reached at that moment, the page says so and keeps your domain exactly as it was. Try again shortly.

If verification will not complete

Verification depends entirely on your DNS records being present and correct, so if the page still shows Pending verification:

Give it time. Freshly added records can take minutes to hours to become visible. A record sitting on Not found yet is usually just this.
Check for typos. DNS values, especially the longer signing keys, must match exactly. A record on Not matching is telling you this has happened: something is published at that name, but it is not the value we asked for. Copying with the Copy button avoids the usual mistakes.
Check the host. Some DNS providers automatically append your domain to a record name, which can produce a doubled-up host. If a record will not verify, check how your provider expects the name to be entered.
If the page says it could not ask for a re-check. That means the request to re-check never got through, not that your records failed. Nothing has changed and none of your records were tested. Wait a moment and click Verify again.

What these records do not cover

The records on this page cover mail going out through 1pm, and that is all they do. They do not include a DMARC record, and adding them does not publish one for you.

That matters in one place. If you answer a lead by replying to the notification from your own mail app, 1pm holds that reply in an outbox and checks whether your email provider proved the message really came from your domain. A domain that publishes no DMARC record, and does not sign its own mail with DKIM, gives that check nothing to work with, so the reply waits for you to release it by hand rather than sending itself. Verifying your sending domain here will not change that, because the check is on the mail your provider sends in to us. If you would like those replies to release themselves, why a reply you emailed in is waiting has the record to publish and where to put it.

A note on replies

This setting controls the address lead mail is sent from, which is about your branding. It is separate from how a lead's reply finds its way back into the right thread in 1pm, which works regardless of whether you have set up a sending domain. If you are curious how that routing works, see how lead reply emails work. For the day-to-day of the thread itself, see replying to leads.