Sendy and redirect problems with custom domains

[snoopy5]

Hi,

Sendy offers the option to purchase an additional package to use the same Sendy installation also for other domain name and the correct domain name appears as the sender instead of the domain name on which Sendy is installed. See here and here.

I have trouble to get the redirection working for my custom domains. I followed the instructions within Sendy, added CNAME in the DNS of the custom domain, made sure it is in my case https (but tested also with http) for the custom domain but if I click on the test page, it does not forward it to the original Sendy installation as it should. It leads always to the custom domain, which should not happen,

People who had the same problem solved this issue by creating an alias in cpanel. But I do not have cpanel.

I asked the question in the Sendy forum, but each question needs to be approved beforehand and since 2 days nothing happens. The Sendy forum seems to be dead.

Any ideas/help would be appreciated.

 

[Suzanne O]

Please submit a ticket over at aws because all of these issues are their issues.
sounds like this sendy app is no good.

 

[HWS]

sounds like this sendy app is no good.

Sendy is one of the very few software pieces with a very high value for a very low price. It is very well maintained and updated as needed. We never had a single issue in all the years we've used it. We used several (very expensive) mailing providers before Sendy and had a lot of problems with them before we found Sendy.

But as with all information technology items you need some basic knowledge about what you want to do, what you do and how you do it.

@snoopy5 As a forum owner you never need a multiple domain license extension with Sendy. You can use any sender addresses you like for any mailing lists in Sendy for each of your forums IF you authorize AWS SES to allow the sender address before you use it. There is no need to extend the Sendy license for using even hundreds of different sender addresses/domains.

You only need the additional domains extensions with Sendy if you're selling mailing list services and want your clients to access the Sendy interface with additional, customized URLs. All that has nothing to do with the addresses you use to send mailings from.

 

[snoopy5]

Please submit a ticket over at aws because all of these issues are their issues.
sounds like this sendy app is no good.

This can not be an issue with AWS, because these settings need to be done on my server. This has nothing to do with AWS.

Just because I have 2 questions does not mean that Sendy is bad. With this kind of logic Xenforo would be the worst forum software, because you can find here thousands of questions about the right settings with XF.

 

[snoopy5]

You can use any sender addresses you like for any mailing lists in Sendy for each of your forums IF you authorize AWS SES to allow the sender address before you use it.

Yes, but you mean somethig different. As far as I understood it, if I do not use the custom domain package, all unsubscribe links etc. in the emails will be URLs to the domain name on which Sendy is installed.

If I have Sendy installed on domain (forum) #1, all emails from forum #2 and #3 and #4 will include links to domain #1, not to the others.

This will confuse the forum users and will probably flag that newsletter as spam. To avoid this, you can buy these custom domain packages and all links will be converted before the email will go out and the URLs are correctly displayed to the domain and forum they do belong.

Thanks to this custom domain packages, you save a lot of money and you have only one single login for all your different forums-newsletters.

Quote:

Custom Domains​

Custom Domain feature increases your brand recognition with your subscribers by using your own domain for trackable links and the web version of the email. Brand recognition lowers complaint rate and increases conversion for an email marketing campaign.

Source: https://www.sendybay.com/sendy-email-marketing-features


Have you setup Sendy, that you are able to send i.e. to 3 different forums with different domain names and the links in it show the different domain names in each email correctly?

 

[HWS]

As far as I understood it,

This is correct. All links in the mailings are handled by Sendy and will use the URL where Sendy is installed.
But this should be no problem. We use a domain like "mailhandler.com" for our Sendy installation.

will probably flag that newsletter as spam

No, it won't.

 

[snoopy5]

This is correct. All links in the mailings are handled by Sendy and will use the URL where Sendy is installed.
But this should be no problem. We use a domain like "mailhandler.com" for our Sendy installation.



No, it won't.

Have you made a test on mail-tester.com?

Which rating do you get there with the other domains and do you use an individual Amazon IP for 25 USD/month for this?

 

[TPerry]

I have trouble to get the redirection working for my custom domains. I followed the instructions within Sendy, added CNAME in the DNS of the custom domain, made sure it is in my case https (but tested also with http) for the custom domain but if I click on the test page, it does not forward it to the original Sendy installation as it should. It leads always to the custom domain, which should not happen,

Did you catch you can't use the alias/second domain to be your actual domain itself for setting up that "alias", right?
Say your main Sendy domain is seemenow.com and the second domain is hereiam.com, you can't use hereiam.com as your alias, you to use a sub-domain like see.hereiam.com and point the cname at your seemenow.com from reading that second link you provided.
According to what I read, your outbound emails will show as from see.hereiam.com but route through seemenow.com.

 

[TPerry]

Please submit a ticket over at aws because all of these issues are their issues.

AWS is not Sendy. Sendy apparently uses SES on the back end... but your configuration is via Sendy.

sounds like this sendy app is no good.

more like you really don't know what you are talking about than "this sendy app is no good". There are several that utilize Sendy successfully.

 

[snoopy5]

Did you catch you can't use the alias/second domain to be your actual domain itself for setting up that "alias", right?
Say your main Sendy domain is seemenow.com and the second domain is hereiam.com, you can't use hereiam.com as your alias, you to use a sub-domain like see.hereiam.com and point the cname at your seemenow.com from reading that second link you provided.
According to what I read, your outbound emails will show as from see.hereiam.com but route through seemenow.com.

Yes. I tried it even with 2 different forums for different subdomains. With one I first created a subdomin in reality and then put the CNAME in it, with the other one I did not create in reality a subdomain but nevertheless put a CNAME for a subdomain into the main domain name.

The latter one is the way how Sendy is recommending it. Quote:

Please do not create any 'redirections', 'sub-domains', or 'A records' for the custom domain you're trying to setup. You only create a CNAME record as per the instructions.

Source: https://sendy.co/troubleshooting#custom-domain-not-working



My guess is that the problem is with my webhoster, since I can only have the possibility to change DNS for the whole domain name, but not only for a subdomain name. Or is this normal? I did then this:




Neither one worked.

 

[TPerry]

All you should have to do is create a simple subdomain cname entry for the domain and point it at the main Sendy domain. If that's not working, you need to shoot it up the Sendy help line.
Did you verify that the subdomain cname entry you had created had successfully replicated? It looks like you are using your hosting provider for DNS resolution... and some hosting providers take a LONG time to fully replicate. It's one reason I do all my DNS via CloudFlare.
Did you submit an email to hello@sendy.co for support?

 

[snoopy5]

Did you verify that the subdomain cname entry you had created had successfully replicated?

How can I verify this?

 

[TPerry]

How can I verify this?

As pointed out in that support document

DNS Propagation Checker - Global DNS Checker Tool

Instant DNS Propagation Check. Global DNS Propagation Checker - Check DNS records around the world.

www.whatsmydns.net

 

[snoopy5]

As pointed out in that support document

DNS Propagation Checker - Global DNS Checker Tool

Instant DNS Propagation Check. Global DNS Propagation Checker - Check DNS records around the world.

www.whatsmydns.net

ah, ok, I did that already. I forgot to mention this. Strangely it resolves there correctly to the domain on which Sendy is installed (I installed it on the subdomain newsletter.dxxx.com)

But neither on my PC nor on my smartphone it does redirect. It just stays at the custom domain (subdomain)

I already deleted browser cache etc. on my PC







As far as I understand it, it can not be a cache or update issue on my server, otherwise it would not show up correctly at whatsmydns.net.

I tried it also with both https:// and http:// . No difference in the results

Here a screenshot of my settings in Sendy for the custom domain: