Maildoso manages your DNS
To get the best deliverability with our sending infrastructure, Maildoso fully manages DNS for the domains you use with us. You connect a domain by pointing it to our two nameservers at your registrar, and we create and maintain the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records automatically. Domains bought through Maildoso are configured automatically and need no nameserver changes.
Because we run our own sending infrastructure, these records are kept on our side so your mailboxes stay correctly configured — which is why we don't hand out a set of records for you to paste into your own DNS host, and why a few things work differently than on a domain you manage yourself.
What you control: the nameservers at your registrar
The only DNS-related action on your side is keeping our two nameservers — and nothing else — set at your registrar. Leftover or extra nameservers, expired ones, or none at all will stop DNS from resolving and mailboxes will fail. Don't switch the domain back to your registrar's default nameservers: that moves DNS away from Maildoso and stops mail from flowing.
Connect the domain in your dashboard (Domains → Connect existing domains, or Home → Add domains → Connect existing) — full walkthrough in Can I bring my own domains?
Copy the two nameservers we generate for the domain (shown in the Nameservers column on the Domains page).
At your registrar, choose the "custom nameservers" option and replace the existing ones with ours. In GoDaddy: My Products → Domains → Manage All → select the domain → DNS / Manage DNS → Nameservers → Change → Enter my own nameservers → paste ours → Save. Other registrars (Namecheap, Squarespace, Spaceship, etc.) have the same "custom nameservers" option in their domain settings.
Wait. Activation usually completes within about 2 hours and can take up to 24–48 hours for full propagation. Avoid making repeated changes in the meantime — that can restart the process.
If a domain stays at Awaiting NS or another status, see My domain shows "NS Not Set" and the Domain status glossary.
Verifying your setup
On the Domains page, check that the domain shows Active.
On Email accounts, check that its mailboxes are Active too.
Optionally, inspect the published records with a public lookup tool such as easydmarc.com/tools/dmarc-lookup or MXToolbox. If a domain shows Awaiting NS, use the lookup to confirm the public DNS shows our nameservers.
Because our DKIM and DMARC setup is custom, some third-party checkers don't display it as expected even when everything is correct — see How Maildoso's sending setup looks to an audit tool. If anything looks off, contact us and we'll verify the setup for you.
Why we don't add or change records on request
We don't add, edit or remove DNS records on managed domains on a per-request basis. That includes:
A / CNAME records for websites (including a separate
wwwrecord) or for third-party services such as Microsoft 365 or Exchange;custom tracking-domain CNAMEs from sequencers;
TXT records for Google Postmaster Tools or other verifications;
changes to the DMARC record, including a
ruareporting address;MX records (we operate our own SMTP infrastructure, so MX stays under our control), subdomain splits, or removing records that are part of our setup.
We've tested a wide range of DNS/DMARC configurations on our infrastructure, and the setup we run today gives the best inbox placement. Third-party records add external dependencies that can hurt the shared infrastructure — for example, open-tracking links from third-party tools have been blacklisted in the past. Custom DNS isn't on our roadmap right now, and if third-party DNS changes were introduced we couldn't guarantee deliverability or offer blacklist-related compensation. Pointing a domain to our nameservers also disables any external email service previously set up on it (such as Microsoft 365).
Instead, we monitor reputation proactively: if one of your domains lands on a blacklist that actually causes deliverability problems — not just a checker-tool false positive, see SURBL Listings and Deliverability Impact — our monitoring flags it and we investigate. High-volume accounts may get a dedicated Slack channel with our team for faster turnaround; ask your account contact.
Custom open/click tracking domains
Sequencers like Lemlist and Smartlead use a custom tracking domain (a CNAME record) for open and click tracking. Since third-party CNAMEs aren't allowed on managed domains, that tracking domain can't be verified; sending itself is unaffected. Maildoso applies tracking automatically through Global Custom Domain Tracking, enabled by default. Open-rate tracking is generally not recommended for deliverability anyway.
📹 How to add any links to your cold emails — how to include links in campaigns without hurting deliverability.
Want a website on a sending domain?
Use the redirect instead. Visitors who type a sending domain into a browser already land on a destination you choose — see Domain redirects (on most domains
www.redirects as well). You may not need a website on the sending domain at all.Use a separate domain for your website. Keep sending domains dedicated to email and host your site on a domain you manage yourself — it also keeps your marketing site separated from cold outreach.
Take the domain out for full DNS control. The only way to add your own records is to move the domain off Maildoso's DNS or transfer it out — see Can I stop using Maildoso's DNS? and Transferring domains out of Maildoso. Once a domain leaves our management, we no longer maintain its mail records, so it can't be relied on for sending through Maildoso.
DMARC reports and independent monitoring
DMARC is configured and managed by Maildoso. If you were planning to use DMARC aggregate reports or Google Postmaster Tools for your own monitoring, they wouldn't add useful visibility for a Maildoso setup — the signal that matters is mailbox reputation, and you have two direct views of it:
the reputation we measure for each mailbox in your dashboard — see Understanding your mailbox reputation scores and Understanding your Warmup & Deliverability Insights;
mailbox reputation and placement inside your warmup tool.
Sending IPs aren't something you need to monitor — we track their reputation and rotate them on our side; see How Maildoso manages sending IPs and reputation.
DKIM selectors and a common Instantly misconfiguration
Our DKIM signatures use selectors of the form
smtpNNNNN(a number per domain) and are managed entirely on our side.If you brought a domain that previously used Microsoft 365, a leftover
selector1/selector2CNAME pointing at outlook.com can make third-party checkers report DKIM problems. We don't remove records on request, so if this bothers a checker, use a domain without legacy mail records.Emails arriving with no DKIM signature and an SPF softfail usually mean the sequencer is sending through the wrong SMTP host, not that DKIM is broken. In Instantly, fully delete the mailbox and add it again with manual SMTP settings (smtp.maildoso.com, port 587, STARTTLS) — editing the saved settings or letting the integration "repair" them often doesn't take effect.
Cloudflare-registrar domains
Domains registered through Cloudflare Registrar are locked to Cloudflare's nameservers and can't be pointed to ours, so they can't be used with Maildoso unless you transfer them to another registrar first. A domain that merely uses Cloudflare for DNS is fine. See Using domains registered with Cloudflare Registrar.