Can I setup Mandrill with a different domain?

[Lone Wolf]

I want to setup mandrill to send site emails with a different domain (.xyz instead of .com). for example...

Site: mydomain.com
Mandrill: mydomain.xyz

Does my email address have to be admin@mydomain.xyz or can it be a Yahoo or Gmail address, etc?

What's the nest practise for setting this up. I've rad up that I need the DKIM and SPF setup. Would these be setup to .xyz or .com

Does anyone have a quick setup guide for mandrill with xenforo?

 

[Moshe1010]

you can use any domain you would like. You'll just need to plug in the API key (password) and username from Mandrill.

 

[Lone Wolf]

So the email address in sending from doesn't have to be from the same domain as the domain set up in mandrill?

I thought that helped with the chances of the mails getting through?

 

[Moshe1010]

the email in Mandrill is just for login/identification. I use Mandrill with 10 different domains under the same account. I just use a different API key to each domain (and of course different DKIM and SPF setup). Once you configure a domain in Mandrill, you can send emails from any email address on this domain (which is done via the system you're using and not via Mandrill). Your system needs to have SMTP settings, so you can enter the API key and username, as well as configure a system wide email (Different than Mandrill's username). XF has that. I use it on Wordpress, Magento and other systems.

 

[Sim]

What are you trying to achieve by using different email addresses?

For maximum deliverability, I strongly recommend that the email address that you configure your forum emails to come from is the same as the domain your forum resides on.

If they aren't the same, then any notification emails you send which contain a link back to your forums are likely to be marked as spam because they link to a different website.

So if your forum is mydomain.com, then make sure you have SPF + DKIM set up for mydomain.com and send all emails from something@mydomain.com

Also, if using click tracking, use a CNAME like click.mydomain.com and configure this as your custom tracking domain, because otherwise the URLs get rewritten to be something on mandrillapp.com, which will end up with emails being marked as potentially a scam (destination URL != link address).

I can't see any reason why you wouldn't have emails sent from the same domain that your site resides on?

NEVER use a gmail or other address as your forum email address that emails get sent with - it should only ever be something that uses the same domain as your website.

I recently send 27,000 emails to old members of one of our forums where most had signed up more than 10 years ago! Only had around 5,000 bounce back as undeliverable (mostly hard bounces due to no longer valid email addresses) ... very very few marked as spam or other issues. I did everything I could to ensure maximum deliverability - including being very careful about the addresses being used and where the links in the emails directed to.