As email sending companies constantly try to fight against spam email and the ever-changing rules of large email companies (like Gmail, Apple Mail, etc), we have to make certain tweaks and changes to follow suit.

In this help doc, we are going to explain why you need a "Custom Domain Email" so we can send your Course Emails (Welcome Email, Course Completed Email, etc) on your behalf to your course customers.

⚠️ IMPORTANT #1: Your Teachery Account email address can be a @gmail, @yahoo, @hotmail, etc email address. That's not a problem at all! What we're talking about in this help doc is the email address that's used in your Course Emails.

🤗 IMPORTANT #2: We realize you may not be able to switch to a Custom Domain Email right away, so please note this is NOT a mandatory change, it's just something we highly recommend doing sooner rather than later.

As mentioned at the start of this help doc, email sending companies are starting to require a custom domain email address as a mandatory item to send emails on your behalf.

If you use Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Flodesk, Drip, Active Campaign, etc, you've likely run into this already. Those email providers will not allow you to send emails using your @gmail (ex: jasonlovesdonuts@gmail.com) email address any longer. Instead, they'll require you to use a custom domain email (ex: sprinkles@jasonlovesdonuts.com).

❌ What you used to be able to use in the past: jasonlovesdonuts@gmail.com

✅ The type of email you need to use now: sprinkles@jasonlovesdonuts.com

Hopefully, that explanation gives you a clear understanding of what we mean by a custom domain email address! We want to help you avoid this error at all costs:

(That's the error we are seeing more and more often in our email sending provider when a course email fails to send due to the From Email being @gmail, @yahoo, etc.)

If you already have a custom domain email address and it's not currently being used in your Teachery courses, then you're just a few simple steps away!

If you own a custom domain (ex: mydomainrocks.com) then you're in good shape and have done the hard part.

The next step is to find where in your custom domain provider (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains, wherever you bought your domain) you can create a custom domain email OR a simple forwarding email.

Almost all custom domain providers have Email Forwarding or Email Alias as an included option with your domain. Essentially, all you're doing is creating an email address that will forward to a non-custom domain email. You're not actually setting up an email inbox or doing anything fancy like that.

Here's an example for Google Domains where I own the domain lovesllamas.com and have created an Email Forwarding to my personal @gmail email:

👉👉 I can now use jason@lovesllamas.com as the From Email in all my Teachery Course Emails. Hurray!

Now, all I'd have to do is go back to Step 1️⃣ above and follow the simple steps to add my custom domain email to all my Course Emails.

That will satisfy the email sender requirements and if anyone replies to that email address it will forward to my jason_123@gmail.com email address. Easy peasy!

You can find this in your Domain "Manage" area.

If you use GoDaddy for your domain hosting, you'll need to read this GoDaddy help doc and learn how to add their FREE Email Forwarding "product" to your domain. It's a real dumb set of extra steps, but hey, that's GoDaddy for ya. Follow GoDaddy's help doc and you'll eventually create a new email forward via this archaic page:

Listen, we're not trying to force you into any big buying decision, but buying a domain is very affordable these days (some companies give you one for free if you already doing website hosting or anything else).

If you do NOT have a current website host, have never bought a custom domain before, and simply want our recommendation of a place to buy from? Our recommendation for buying a custom domain is with Google Domains.

📌 NOTE about Custom Domain extensions: When buying a custom domain (via Google Domains or ANY domain provider) you can use whatever domain extension you like: .com, .co, .net, .ninja, .biz, .pizza, any of them will work with our From Email requirements.

If you want to go a step further and actually set up a free email inbox with your custom domain, here's a good helpful guide on how to do that.

This is also not mandatory but if updating DNS records for a custom domain doesn't scare you too much, it is recommended. Think of this as further future-proofing your custom domain's ability to land in the inbox and avoid the spam/junk folders of your customers' email accounts.

Read our help doc on DKIM, SPF, and Email Verification here: https://help.teachery.co/en/articles/4789152-custom-email-sending-domain-setup-dkim-spf-and-email-verification