Overview
Verifying domain ownership is key to enable open and click tracking, spam mitigation, and domain protection (to ensure either you or the members you assign have exclusive access to your domain).
This step-by-step guide will walk you through how to add and verify a domain in Appstle Memberships. For this write-up, I have used Google Domain as the example website hosting provider. However, the steps outlined below are the same for other hosting providers as well!
Please note that if your domain is already hosted somewhere (like Google Domains), you’ll need to login to your provider to change DNS records.
Step 1: Add your domain to Appstle Memberships
If you've already added your domain, skip to step 2
To add your domain to Appstle Memberships,
Navigate to Settings > Customizatinos > Custom Email Domain.
Enter your domain name into the field.
We recommend using a subdomain for better email delivery. In this example, we used membership.yourdomain.com. If you want to just use your domain name, that’s fine too.
Click on Save. You'll then see instructions to add the DNS records to your domain.
Step 2: Add DNS Records to Hosting Provider
Login to your hosting provider and navigate to the DNS section. This area is called ‘DNS’ in Google Domain, but we’ve seen it being called ‘Networking’ in Digital Ocean and ‘Zone Editor’ in cPanel.
Next, you’ll be asked what type of DNS records you want to add. We’ll go through each one individually.
TXT Records
The first records that Appstle Loyalty and Rewards will ask you to add are TXT records. These are required to send and receive email with Appstle Subscriptions.
We will add two separate TXT records, as shown below:
This is an example of what configuring these in your provider can look like. This is Google Domains.
Step 3: Adding CNAME Record
Lastly, you will need to add a CNAME record. The CNAME Record is what enables Open and Click tracking. This is highly recommended to reap the full benefit of Appstle Memberships and gain insights into your email performance.
Add the CNAME the same way you added other names. The hostname here is email.membership.yourdomain.com
Here are the instructions for the same if you are hosting your domain in Shopify:
Step 4: Wait (up to 24 hours)
It can take up to 24 hours for DNS changes to propagate across the internet. In our experience, it usually happens faster than that, but don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t happen immediately.
If you are facing any trouble with this feature, or are looking for more features, please reach out to us at membership-support@appstle.com. Our 24x7x365 available experts will be happy to assist you further.