How do I send onboarding emails from my own domain?

Last updated: August 26, 2026

Authenticate your sending domain in Settings → Account → Email, then set the address you want automation email to come from. No SendGrid account and no API key involved — the only outside step is publishing DNS records.

Before you start

  • Someone who can publish DNS records for the domain — usually IT, or whoever manages your registrar.

  • Access to Account Settings in Onboarded.

Add the domain

  1. Go to Settings → Account → Email.

  2. Under Domain Authentication, select Add domain.

  3. Enter the bare domain your email will come from — acme.com, with no https:// and no path — and select Add domain.

The domain appears in the table with a status of Pending DNS.

Publish the DNS records

  1. On the domain's row, select View DNS records. The dialog lists every record with its Type, Host, and Value.

  2. Copy each Host and Value into your DNS provider exactly as shown. Send the whole list to IT if that's who publishes them.

  3. Save the records at your provider, then give them time to propagate.

Watch how your DNS provider handles host names. Many providers append your domain to whatever you type, which turns a host of em1234.acme.com into em1234.acme.com.acme.com. If yours does that, omit the trailing .acme.com and enter only the part in front of it. This is the single most common reason a record comes back Not found.

Verify the domain

  1. Back in Onboarded, open View DNS records again and select Verify again.

  2. Read the Status column. Each record shows Found or Not found, and a record that didn't resolve shows the reason underneath it.

When every record resolves, the row flips to Authenticated. Records are only re-checked when you select Verify again — publishing them doesn't flip the status on its own. DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate, so a failure minutes after publishing isn't a sign that something's wrong; wait and check again.

Set the sender address

  1. Next to Sender email, select the pencil.

  2. Enter the address you want candidates to see — onboarding@acme.com — and select Save.

You'll see Emails will now be sent from onboarding@acme.com, and the Default tag disappears from the field. The address has to be on a domain showing Authenticated; anything else is rejected here rather than failing quietly at send time.

Verify

Trigger an automation that sends an email and confirm the message arrives from your address rather than no-reply@onboarded.com. Nothing needs re-saving on your existing automations — the sender is resolved when each email is sent, so every Send Email action you've already built picks the new address up on its next run.

To go back, select Reset to the default Onboarded address under Sender email. That leaves your authenticated domains in place, so you can set the address again whenever you want.

One scope note: this covers automation email only. Team invitations and verification codes still come from the default Onboarded address, and authenticating a domain doesn't change that.

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