Custom domain email is an address such as name@yourcompany.com that carries your company's own domain name. To set up email with your own domain, you need a company-registered domain and a business email service; you then add MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records to its DNS, create users and switch on multi-factor authentication. Done in the right order, the basic set-up can usually be completed the same day.
What is custom domain email, and why not a free address?
A company that trades from an address such as companyname@gmail.com is effectively telling customers, "we cannot prove this address really belongs to us". Anyone can open a similar free address. And when an employee leaves, the account often leaves with them.
Email on your own domain (name@yourcompany.com) solves all three problems. The address belongs to your organisation, the address and its history stay with the company when people change, and you decide through DNS records who may send mail in your domain's name. To decide which service suits you, see the criteria in how to choose business email.
Why an incomplete set-up causes problems
Setting up domain email is easy; setting it up incompletely is even easier. Mail from domains with missing authentication records is now more likely to land in spam or be rejected by the large mailbox providers. According to Google's email sender guidelines, since 1 February 2024 anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts must set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC and keep spam rates below 0.30%. If your mail still lands in spam after setup, follow our steps to fix emails going to spam.
Many of those who do set up the records stop halfway:
EasyDMARC's 2026 report, which scanned 1.8 million domains, found that 52.1% have a DMARC record but only 411,935 domains (about 23%) enforce a quarantine or reject policy. (EasyDMARC 2026 DMARC Adoption Report)
The second gap is usually identity. A peer-reviewed study by Microsoft researchers found that multi-factor authentication (MFA) reduces the risk of account compromise by 99.22% across all users and by 98.56% where credentials had leaked. The current picture is no different: according to the Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025, more than 97% of identity attacks are password attacks. Switching MFA on from day one is far easier than retrofitting it later.
The DNS records you will use
| Record | Type | What it does | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain verification | TXT | Proves to the provider that you own the domain | Creating users before verification completes |
| MX | MX | Tells the internet which server receives your mail | Forgetting to delete old MX records |
| SPF | TXT | Lists the servers allowed to send mail for your domain | Publishing more than one SPF record |
| DKIM | TXT / CNAME | Adds a verifiable signature to outgoing mail | Publishing the key but never enabling signing |
| DMARC | TXT | Says what to do with mail that fails SPF/DKIM and where reports go | Leaving it at p=none for years |
A domain can have only one SPF record, and that record may trigger no more than ten DNS lookups (RFC 7208). Every service that sends mail in your domain's name, such as your website, invoicing software and newsletter tool, must be included in that single record. For a detailed explanation, read SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained.
How to set up email with your own domain in eight steps
- Check who owns the domain. It should be registered to your company, in an account the company controls, not in the personal account of an employee or a web agency. In Türkiye,
.com.trdomains are registered through accredited registrars via TRABİS, the registry run by the telecoms regulator BTK. - Find out where DNS is managed. It may be the registrar, your web hosting company or a separate DNS service. Knowing who can change the records saves hours later.
- Choose the email service and verify the domain. Add the TXT record the provider gives you; do not create users until verification is complete.
- Add the MX record. Remove old MX records, including any that came with a web hosting package; MX records pointing at two different systems split your mail between two systems.
- Set up SPF and DKIM. Gather every sending service into one SPF record, publish the DKIM key and switch signing on.
- Tighten DMARC in stages. Start with
p=noneand watch the reports; once all legitimate mail is authenticating, move toquarantine, thenreject. This makes it harder for others to send fake mail in your domain's name; lookalike domain attacks that change a single letter need separate controls. - Design users and shared addresses. Plan personal mailboxes, shared addresses such as
info@andaccounts@, aliases and distribution lists from the start. Open shared addresses with per-person permissions rather than a shared password; see shared mailbox management. - Configure security and devices. Turn on MFA, set up a corporate email signature template, add accounts on phones and computers, and send a few test messages outside the company to check the SPF, DKIM and DMARC results in the headers.
How quickly DNS changes take effect depends on each record's TTL, so lowering the TTL in advance and scheduling the MX change outside working hours keeps disruption to a minimum.
Is the email that comes with web hosting enough?
Many web hosting packages include a handful of free mailboxes. They may look adequate at first, but quotas, backups, the admin panel, shared mailbox permissions and security filtering are often limited. Keeping your website and email on the same server also means a flaw in the site can affect your email. Once several people and shared addresses are involved, a dedicated business email service usually gives you a sounder foundation. Where the price differences between packages come from is explained in business email pricing factors.
Passwords and identity
When you create mailboxes, do not email passwords to staff and do not use one shared password. We cover password policy and password managers in business password security, and closing a leaver's access in offboarding email access.
How we set up domain email at Digital Bridge
We treat the set-up as the foundation of your company's communications rather than a DNS tweak:
- Discovery. We establish who the domain is registered to, where DNS is managed and every service that sends mail in your domain's name (website forms, ERP, e-invoicing, newsletters).
- Secure set-up. Through our cyber security consultancy we configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC and tighten DMARC in stages based on the reports. For the wider set of basic controls we work through the SME cyber security checklist.
- Migration. If you are coming from an existing system, we plan the move of old mail through our cloud migration and infrastructure consultancy; the steps are in our email migration guide.
- Process. Domain email is often part of a wider digitalisation step. With our digital transformation consultancy we look at email, files and approvals together, and set priorities in the spirit of a digital transformation roadmap.
Domain email with Smart360
With our own Smart360 family there is nothing to install: the account opens as soon as payment is confirmed. Domains and DNS settings, users, departments and product access are managed from a single admin panel at tenant.smart360.com.tr. If you run several companies, each is a separate tenant managed from one account, and none can see another's data. For SmartMail, the family's business email product, the Smart360 team prepares and verifies the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records (plus the recommended MTA-STS and TLS-RPT), and you follow their status in the panel. DMARC reports also arrive at SmartMail's own collector address and are turned into a readable format.
In SmartMail, mailbox passwords are generated by the system and stored encrypted with AES-256-GCM; they are never handed out to staff, who sign in with a single identity (SmartID). Human verification on sign-in screens stops password-guessing attacks before they reach the server, and sessions are listed with device details and can be closed remotely. Shared mailboxes are opened to individuals with nine separate permissions, and per-mailbox signatures and distribution lists are set up in the same panel.
On the inbound side, SmartMail evaluates every message with its own SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR checks, structural checks such as lookalike domains, display name impersonation and Reply-To mismatches, and an AI assessment of the text. So as well as setting up your own domain correctly, you see the fake mail sent to you, with the reasons spelled out.
Your next step
The first thing you can do today is find out who your domain is registered to and who manages its DNS. With that information, get in touch via our contact page; we will review your current records with you and set up your domain email securely. For more guides, see Business Email & Documents.