Email Deliverability - HL Vanilla Community
<main> <article class="userContent"> <p>In your Vanilla community, email is an essential tool for communicating with your members. It may get overlooked as a feature, but there are some important aspects of email and email settings that are important to note.</p><h2 data-id="outgoing-email-settings"><strong>Outgoing Email settings</strong></h2><p>Before you launch your community, review your <strong>Outgoing Email</strong> settings.</p><ol><li>Access the Dashboard.</li><li>Navigate to <strong>Settings > Technical > Outgoing Email</strong>.</li></ol><p>By default, the <strong>Email</strong> address field is populated with the email address that is used for your Vanilla Forums account.</p><div class="embedExternal embedImage display-large float-none"> <div class="embedExternal-content"> <a class="embedImage-link" href="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/EGLQP4V8Y1WW/outgoing-email.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener ugc" target="_blank"> <img class="embedImage-img" src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/EGLQP4V8Y1WW/outgoing-email.png" alt="Outgoing Email.png" height="312" width="920" loading="lazy" data-display-size="large" data-float="none"></img></a> </div> </div> <p>📝 <strong>NOTE</strong>: If you don't change this email address, it will be used for all user messages and be visible when users receive emails from your community, including any notifications they have subscribed to.</p><ul><li>If the email address is not something you want public, you should change it before you launch your community.</li><li>Also, be sure to specify a <strong>Name</strong> that your users will recognize as being from the community.</li></ul><h2 data-id="how-do-we-ensure-good-deliverability"><strong>How do we ensure good deliverability?</strong></h2><p>Email messages are sent via a third-party transactional email service that employs a full-time postmaster and ensures that their sending IP addresses are always in good standing with <strong>Internet Service Providers</strong> (<strong>ISPs</strong>).</p><p>If notifications are not getting through your corporate email server, add <code class="code codeInline" spellcheck="false" tabindex="0">include:sendgrid.net</code> OR <code class="code codeInline" spellcheck="false" tabindex="0">ip4:208.117.49.186 </code>to the domain SPF record.</p><h2 data-id="sender-authentication-in-vanilla">Sender Authentication in Vanilla</h2><p>Sender authentication is the process of proving to <strong>Internet Service Providers</strong> (<strong>ISPs</strong>) that Vanilla and our provider have your permission to send your community email messages on your behalf.</p><p><strong>📝 NOTE</strong>: Vanilla sends your Vanilla community email messages via <a href="https://sendgrid.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">SendGrid</a>.</p><h3 data-id="availability-of-sender-authentication">Availability of Sender Authentication</h3><p>Vanilla offers sender authentication to customers at the following plan levels: <em>Corporate 2020</em>, <em>Enterprise 2020</em>, <em>Essential 2021</em>, <em>Corporate 2021</em>, <em>Enterprise 2021</em>, and <em>Enterprise Plus 2021</em>.</p><ul><li>To learn about <em>Vanilla's plan levels</em>, see:</li></ul><div class="js-embed embedResponsive" data-embedjson="{"body":"Plans for all budgets. Vanilla Forums Plans & Pricing Information","photoUrl":"https:\/\/vanillaforums.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/get-app-300x235.png","url":"https:\/\/vanillaforums.com\/plans\/","embedType":"link","name":"Vanilla Forums Plans & Pricing Information"}"> <a href="https://vanillaforums.com/plans/" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc"> https://vanillaforums.com/plans/ </a> </div><h2 data-id="set-up-sender-authentication">Set up Sender Authentication</h2><p>To set up sender authentication, we have to add DNS records to your hosting service.</p><p>These DNS records associate your sending domain with SendGrid. After this is done, when an inbox provider processes your email message, they will see your domain instead of <strong>via vanillaforums.com</strong>, as shown in the images below.</p><p>To set up sender authentication:</p><ol><li>Navigate to the <strong>Outgoing Email</strong> page and configure the email address and sender name fields; these are described above in <strong>Outgoing Email settings</strong>.</li><li>Contact Vanilla Support, <a href="unsafe:support@vanillaforums.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">support@vanillaforums.com</a>, and have them confirm your Outgoing Email settings.</li><li>A Vanilla Support agent will coordinate with Vanilla Ops to provide you with the DNS records to update.</li><li>Have your technical team implement the DNS records.</li><li>Contact Vanilla Support, <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/121/support@vanillaforums.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc">support@vanillaforums.com</a>, and have them confirm that the DNS records are in place.</li><li>A Vanilla Support agent will coordinate with Vanilla Ops to ensure that sender authentication is in place, and will contact you to confirm.</li></ol><h4 data-id="default-delivery">Default delivery</h4><div class="embedExternal embedImage display-large float-none"> <div class="embedExternal-content"> <a class="embedImage-link" href="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/AZ3XM6T7PSZD/delivery-default.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener ugc" target="_blank"> <img class="embedImage-img" src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/AZ3XM6T7PSZD/delivery-default.png" alt="Delivery-default.png" height="432" width="805" loading="lazy" data-display-size="large" data-float="none"></img></a> </div> </div> <h4 data-id="delivery-with-sender-authentication">Delivery with sender authentication</h4><div class="embedExternal embedImage display-large float-none"> <div class="embedExternal-content"> <a class="embedImage-link" href="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/GB4WBTS0E5OL/delivery-sender-authentication.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener ugc" target="_blank"> <img class="embedImage-img" src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6030677/uploads/GB4WBTS0E5OL/delivery-sender-authentication.png" alt="Delivery-sender authentication.png" height="368" width="711" loading="lazy" data-display-size="large" data-float="none"></img></a> </div> </div> <h2 data-id="related-articles">Related articles</h2><ul><li>To learn how to <em>set up the look</em> (colors, images, and other styling) of <em>your HTML emails</em>, see:</li></ul><div class="js-embed embedResponsive" data-embedjson="{"body":"You can choose between sending plaintext or HTML emails. HTML emails can include colors, images and other styling while plaintext emails are just plain text. HTML emails can be enabled or disabled from the dashboard by navigating to the ‘Email’ link in the panel. From there, you can also preview an email, send test emails…","photoUrl":"https:\/\/us.v-cdn.net\/6030677\/uploads\/VWGAXAF5OFCO\/microsoftteams-image.png","url":"https:\/\/success.vanillaforums.com\/kb\/articles\/6","embedType":"link","name":"Configuring Email Appearance - Vanilla Success"}"> <a href="https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/6" rel="nofollow noreferrer ugc"> https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/6 </a> </div><p><br></p> </article> </main>