How to send email from your own domain in E‑STAGE

Where replies can land

From the E-STAGE Knowledge Base, October 2026. Sending always goes through E-STAGE; these providers only receive the replies.

How sending works in E-STAGE

You write the message, choose who gets it, and E-STAGE sends it from your domain. Contacts, sending, bounces and reporting stay in one place, so you do not need a separate email tool. If you already use one, such as Mailchimp, Kit or ActiveCampaign, you can connect it in Settings → Email Integrations instead.

Two numbers control how much you can send. Your sending allowance is the total you may send. Your sending level is how many you may send today, based on your domain’s reputation.

The four setup steps

• Connect your domain to your project.
• Confirm the domain is yours: in Settings → Email sending, open the Domain authentication card and click Authenticate domain.
• Let people reply (recommended, not required). Without it you can send, but nobody can write back.
• Create a sending address: a From name, the mailbox part of the address (E-STAGE adds your domain), an optional Reply-to, and whether it is the default.

Domain authentication: the records

Authentication adds a DKIM record, which signs every message so the receiver can tell it was not forged, plus MX and TXT records on a mail. subdomain that align your return path with your domain. If E-STAGE manages your DNS, the records are written for you. If your DNS is somewhere else, E-STAGE shows a table with the type, name and value to copy into your DNS provider.

The card then shows Authenticated, DKIM PENDING (normal for the first few minutes) or DKIM FAILED (a record is missing or wrong, so copy it again). DMARC is not needed to start, but it becomes required above 5,000 emails a day and for a brand logo in the inbox: publish p=quarantine or p=reject as a TXT record on _dmarc.yourdomain.com.

Getting replies in Google Workspace or Outlook

• If the domain is registered or transferred through E-STAGE, E-STAGE hosts the inbox. Nothing else to set up.
• If you already pay for email elsewhere, add your domain to that provider (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho Mail, Fastmail or Proton Mail) and copy the DNS records it gives you.
• Paste them in Genesis under Domains → DNS records, on that domain.
• Moving a domain to E-STAGE? If its old MX records were left behind, this step shows as unfinished, because the old inbox really is gone until you add them back.

Sending addresses

Each address shows VERIFIED, PENDING or FAILED. On an authenticated domain, addresses usually verify on their own. You can set one as the default and send a test, but tests come out of your allowance too.

Use an address a person actually reads. E-STAGE saves a no-reply@ address but warns you about it, because no-reply addresses lower replies and engagement.

Daily limit and warm-up

• A new domain starts at Level 1, with 500 emails a day. Level 0 means the domain is not authenticated yet and can only send to test addresses.
• Each level roughly doubles the daily limit. A clean sender usually climbs about one level a day and reaches the top in under a week.
• To climb you need complaints under 0.10%, hard bounces under 2%, enough mail delivered at your current level, and one day since the last change.
• Level 3 and above need DMARC, because Gmail requires it above 5,000 messages a day.
• A broadcast bigger than today’s limit is not rejected. E-STAGE tells you upfront that it will be spread over several days.

Your sending allowance

You find it in the Deliverability card under Settings → Email sending. Plan volume comes with your subscription and resets each billing period. Purchased volume is pay as you go and never resets. Plan volume is used first.

To buy more, go to Genesis → Account → Allocation & credits. If the allowance runs out, sending simply pauses until the plan resets or you buy more. Nothing is lost.

Stay out of spam

• Bounces and complaints decide whether you keep sending. A 2% bounce rate or a 0.1% complaint rate is a warning; 5% bounces or 0.5% complaints risk a pause.
• Send only to people who opted in, and remove contacts who have not opened in a year.
• Bounced, complained and unsubscribed addresses are suppressed automatically. Never import them again.
• Send on a steady rhythm. Coming back after months of silence with a big send is exactly what mailbox providers punish.
• If sending is paused: stop new campaigns, find the list that caused it, remove the bad addresses, contact support, then restart with small sends to engaged contacts.