Last modified on: Oct 30, 2023

Organisations that are in the Enterprise and above editions of Zoho CRM, and have not authenticated their email-sending domains will have their newly created mass emails and other email notifications associated with newly created or edited automated processes (like workflows, blueprints, etc.) sent from email addresses connected to Zoho's own authenticated domains. This change has been rolled out to accounts across all data centres. Upon authenticating their domains, the emails tied to these processes will be sent from their own email addresses automatically.

Modified on: Oct 4, 2023

Organisations who are in the Free, Standard, and Professional editions of Zoho CRM, and have not authenticated their email-sending domains will have all their emails sent from email addresses connected to Zoho's own authenticated domains. This change has now been applied to accounts in all data centres. Once these accounts authenticate their domains, the emails will automatically be sent from their own email addresses.

What is domain authentication?

How are these updates going to ensure domain authentication?

1. Email addresses from public domains will automatically be re-formatted: Email addresses from public domains like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook will be automatically updated to Zoho CRM's own authenticated domains. For example, when a user sends emails using emailaddress@gmail.com via Zoho CRM, the email's recipients will see the emails in their inboxes as being sent from emailaddress.gmail.com@zohocrm-2380248-sdus09.com.
   
   We're making this change and disallowing the use of public email providers, as they are prone to the extreme scrutiny of inbox providers and have poor deliverability rates—thereby affecting our sender reputation. For instance, when rogue users sign up for Zoho CRM free trials using addresses from public email providers just to send spam emails through our systems, we will be able to act faster and stop these users, as the emails they send are routed from our authenticated domains and we can easily identify any bad actors damaging our sender reputation.
   
   
2. Email addresses from non-authenticated domains will also be automatically re-formatted: We are mandating domain authentication for all email-sending domains. This means that even if users have been sending emails through non-authenticated email addresses so far, after this enhancement, their email addresses will automatically be re-formatted similarly to email addresses from public email providers—unless their domains are authenticated.
   
   For example, if users send emails from sales@zylker.com, recipients will see the emails in their inboxes as being sent from sales.zylker.com@zohocrm-2380248-sdus09.com, assuming zylker.com has not been authenticated.
   
   This mandate is to improve Zoho CRM's sender reputation and to meet the highest industry standards. As Zoho CRM uses a shared back-end infrastructure to send all of our user's emails, it's essential that customers with authenticated domains and healthy email-sending practices are protected from the damage to our infrastructure caused by accounts using non-authenticated domains to send emails.
   
   This is important to note unless all domains that are used to send emails from your Zoho CRM accounts are authenticated, this will affect your existing emails, workflows, and business communication that you may have currently set up.

• The Email Authentication page (Setup > Channels > Email > Email Deliverability > Email Authentication) will display all the domains that are accessible within your account, determined by the email addresses found in both your active user's list and organizational email addresses under Available domains. Users should ensure that they have authenticated their email-sending domains from the list of available domains.
  
• The mentioned email deliverability changes do not apply when users send emails through their configured mailbox or when an email relay server is set up for an account.

Release plan:

• Recommended domain authentication and sender address change for non-authenticated domains have now been released for all new organizations who sign up for Zoho CRM.
  
• For existing users who send or configure email notifications from inside Zoho CRM, we will soon have in-product reminders and alerts informing about these changes.