Domains

Manage your DNS: DMARC record

Definitions

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is an authentication system that helps protect your domain name from being used for phishing or spam.

DNS (Domain Name System) records are like an address book entry that tell the internet where to find and how to interact with your domain, subdomain, email, and other online services.

Before you start

‼️ READ HERE FIRST DMARC record management depends on your email service and DNS setup, read the descriptions below to use the correct steps.

Scenario A

  • ✉️ Email Service: Your email is hosted with us, created and managed in our web hosting control panel.

🤔 What do I do? DMARC is automatically activated. No action is needed, you don’t need to do anything.

Scenario B

  • ✉️ Email Service: Your email is hosted with us, created and managed in our web hosting control panel. OR, your email is hosted by Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
  • 🌐 DNS: Your domain uses external DNS or CDN providers (like Cloudflare).

🤔 What do I do? Follow the step by step instructions below to activate DMARC.

Step by step

In this example, we’ll activate our DMARC record on Cloudflare. You can use these steps as a guideline for any external DNS provider.

1. Log in to your hosting control panel

2. From the top right, click the down arrow ∨ and choose the domain you want to access the DMARC record for

3. Click on the DNS Zones button

4. Under the Value column, locate the DNS entry that starts with _dmarc – this is your DMARC entry. Keep your web browser window open here.

5. Open a new web browser window, and log in to your external DNS provider’s user dashboard. In our example, we’ll log into our Cloudflare dashboard.

6. Go to the DNS management section of your domain name and select to add a new TXT record OR edit the existing DMARC record if it already exists.

⚠️ Note: DMARC records are considered as TXT records in DNS zones.

7. Enter the name of the DMARC record, which will always be:

_dmarc

8. Enter the entire content of the DMARC record from your Value column that starts with _dmarc. For example, our entire DMARC value is:

v=DMARC1; p=none;

⚠️ Note: You will see your DMARC record within quotations ” ” on your hosting control panel – do NOT put these quotations in when inputting the content of your DMARC record at your DNS provider.

9. Save your TXT record to activate DMARC on your domain name at your DNS provider

  • Here is one example of the process. In this example, we will add a new TXT record to activate our DMARC record.
  • Here is another example of the process. In this example, we have an existing DMARC record, so we will edit it to activate our DMARC record.