Email Setup

Your portal sends emails on your behalf to your customers — invoices, payment reminders, receipts, OTP codes, and account invitations. This guide walks you through configuring your email settings so those messages are delivered reliably.

Getting to Email Settings

From your portal admin, navigate to Settings and then click Email Settings.

You'll see three sections on this page:

1. Email Setup Help — a quick summary with a link to the video tutorial
2. From Email / From Name — where you set your sender address and display name
3. Domain Validation — where you verify your domain for best deliverability

Step 1: Set Your From Email and From Name

At the top of the page you'll see two fields:

• From Email — the email address that appears as the sender on emails your portal sends (e.g., billing@yourcompany.com    )
• From Name — the display name recipients see (e.g., Your Company LLC    )

Set these to whatever you'd like recipients to see, then click Save.

Important: Do not use a free email address (like @gmail.com    , @yahoo.com    , or @outlook.com    ) as your From Email. These providers block third-party services from sending on their behalf, and your emails will be rejected by recipient mail servers. Use an address on a domain you own (e.g., yourname@yourcompany.com    ). If you don't have a custom domain that has been validated, our servers will send from a generic alias like emails@gotomyaccounts.com and then set a reply-to with the from address you provide here.

Step 2: Validate Your Domain (Strongly Recommended)

Domain validation is the single most important thing you can do to ensure your emails are delivered. It adds records to your domain's DNS that tell recipient email servers — Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and others — that GoToMyAccounts is authorized to send email on your behalf.

Without domain validation, your emails may be sent to spam or rejected entirely. As of 2024-2025, Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft all require sender authentication, and emails that fail these checks are actively blocked.

How to validate your domain

The Domain Validation section is below the From Email settings. If you haven't validated a domain yet, you'll see a prompt to enter your domain name and begin the process. Once you submit your domain, the page will show the DNS records you need to add.

The DNS records

Click DNS Setup to expand the full list of records. You'll see three items:

SPF Record

• What it does: Tells email servers which mail servers are allowed to send for your domain.
• Record type: TXT record at the root of your domain (@    )
• Value: The page shows the exact value to use. It will contain include:spf.postal.gotomyaccounts.com    . If you already send email from other services (like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365), you don't need to create a second SPF record — just add the include:spf.postal.gotomyaccounts.com     part to your existing record.

DKIM Record

• What it does: Adds a digital signature to your emails so recipients can verify they haven't been tampered with.
• Record type: TXT record
• Value: The page shows the record name and value. Copy them exactly as shown into your DNS provider.

Return Path

• What it does: Improves deliverability by aligning bounce handling with your domain.
• Record type: CNAME record pointing to rp.postal.gotomyaccounts.com    
• Note: The page describes this as optional, but we strongly recommend adding it. It makes a meaningful difference in delivery rates.

Adding the records to your DNS

These records are added through your domain's DNS provider — that's wherever your domain is registered or wherever your nameservers point to (common providers include Cloudflare, GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Google Domains).

If you're not sure how to add DNS records, or you're not the person who manages your domain:

• Check with whoever set up your company website or manages your domain — they can usually add these records in a few minutes
• Your DNS provider's support documentation will have instructions for adding TXT and CNAME records
• The Email Setup Tutorial/Video link at the top of the Email Settings page walks through the process step by step

Checking your settings

After adding the DNS records, click the Check DNS Settings button on the Email Settings page. Each record will show its current status:

• SPF Status — OK or needs attention
• DKIM Status — OK or needs attention
• Return Path Status — OK or needs attention

When all three show green checkmarks and the domain displays VALID, you're fully set up.

Note: DNS changes can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours to take effect. If the check doesn't pass right away, wait 15-30 minutes and try again. This is normal.

Alternative: Send Through Your Own SMTP Server

If you prefer to route emails through your own mail server or a third-party email service (like SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, or Brevo), click the "I want to send emails through my own mail/smtp server" link below the From Name field.

This expands the SMTP configuration with the following fields:

• SMTP Host — your mail server's hostname (e.g., smtp.sendgrid.net    )
• SMTP Port — typically 587     or 465     for secure connections
• Use TLS? — check this box if your server requires TLS encryption (when enabled, your port should be 465     or 587    )
• SMTP Username — your authentication username
• SMTP Password — your authentication password

After entering your settings, click Test Settings to verify the connection works before saving. This sends a test email to confirm everything is configured correctly.

When using your own SMTP server:

• Domain validation through GoToMyAccounts is not required (as noted on the settings page) — your email provider handles authentication
• Email delivery logs and tracking are available through your email provider's dashboard, not within GoToMyAccounts
• Be aware of your provider's sending limits. Personal/corporate email services often have caps that can be an issue when sending batches of invoices or notifications simultaneously. Dedicated transactional email services (SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, Postmark, Brevo) are designed for higher volumes and are the better choice if you send more than a handful of emails per day.

Which Option Should I Choose?

For the best experience, we recommend domain validation. It's a one-time setup that significantly improves delivery to all major email providers.

Video Tutorial

The following video tutorial was published some time ago and demonstrates the basic steps to validate a domain.

Troubleshooting

If you've set up your email and your customers aren't receiving messages, see our companion article: Email Delivery: Why Your Emails May Not Be Reaching Recipients (and How to Fix It). It covers the most common causes of delivery issues and how to resolve them.

Coming Soon: An Even Simpler Setup Experience

We're in the process of making significant improvements to how email sending works in GoToMyAccounts. Our goal is to make email work reliably for every portal from the very first day — without requiring any setup at all. We're also rebuilding the domain validation experience with simpler step-by-step guidance and better tools to help you (or your IT team) get through DNS setup faster.

We'll update this article and announce changes as they roll out. In the meantime, the setup steps above are the best path to reliable email delivery.

Need Help?

If you're having trouble with email setup, contact our support team. It helps if you can let us know:

• The domain you're trying to validate
• Which DNS provider you use (Cloudflare, GoDaddy, etc.)
• Whether any of the DNS checks are failing and what status they show
• Screenshots of your Email Settings page

We're happy to help get you set up.