Send review requests from your own email domain
By default your review requests are sent by Cloutly on your behalf. You can instead send them from your own domain, so they arrive from you.
It takes two DNS records and is worth doing for almost everyone.
What changes
- The sender is you. Requests come from an address at your own domain instead of a Cloutly one.
- No "via cloutly.com". Gmail and Outlook stop showing that Cloutly sent on your behalf, which is one of the small signals that makes a message feel automated.
- Better deliverability. Mail properly authenticated for your own domain is more likely to reach the inbox rather than promotions or spam.
Choose the domain first
You can use your main domain — yourcompany.com — or a subdomain such as reviews.yourcompany.com.
We recommend a subdomain. It is what email providers generally advise for any kind of bulk or automated sending, for one reason: sending reputation is tracked per domain. If review requests ever attract spam complaints, a subdomain keeps that away from the domain your invoices, quotes and contracts go out from.
The trade-off is cosmetic — recipients see reviews.yourcompany.com in the sender address rather than yourcompany.com. Most businesses take that trade readily.
A subdomain is also the only sensible option if you later want to receive replies inside Cloutly, so choosing one now saves redoing this.
Setting it up
- Go to Settings → Notifications and enter the domain or subdomain you want to send from
- Cloutly shows you the DNS records to add. There are two for sending:
- a DKIM record (type TXT) — proves the mail genuinely comes from you
- a Return-Path record (type CNAME) — handles bounces properly
- Add both in your DNS provider, copying the values from that screen
- Come back and click Verify
Copy the values from the screen rather than from anywhere else — they are generated for your domain specifically. There is also an "Email instructions to someone" link on that page, which is the easiest way to hand the job to whoever manages your DNS.
DNS changes usually take a few minutes, occasionally longer. The screen tells you whether each record has been verified yet, so you can check back rather than guess.
A third record you will see
The setup screen also lists an MX record. That one is optional and does something different — it lets customer replies come back into Cloutly.
Do not add it without reading Receiving replies in Cloutly first. Added to a domain that carries your normal company email, it can quietly interfere with mail that has nothing to do with reviews. Sending works perfectly well without it.