Email and deliverability

Open Settings → Email. Delivery shows the address your emails come from, where replies go and what's sent.

• Without your own domain, emails come from Tally Sign's shared address and show as "Your company via Tally Sign".
• With a verified domain, they come from your own address, such as Northbeam Software <sign@northbeam.example>.
• Either way, when a recipient replies, the reply goes to the teammate who sent the document, or to your company email when no one did.

Signing requests, reminders, updated versions, void notices, completed copies with the signed PDF, messages to signers about changes and questions, automation emails to recipients and team invites all use your domain. Notices from Tally Sign to your own team, such as seat requests and alerts about a signer's comments, still come from the shared address.

1. 1Open Settings → Email and find Sending domain. Only owners and admins can change it.
2. 2Enter your domain, for example northbeam.example, and choose Add domain.
3. 3Add the DNS records Tally Sign shows (next section), then choose Check DNS.

Until the domain is verified, nothing changes: emails keep coming from the shared address.

After you add a domain, Sending domain lists the DNS records our email provider (Resend) needs. Add each one where your domain's DNS is managed, usually your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace) or DNS host (Cloudflare, Route 53, Google Cloud DNS).

1. 1At your DNS host, create a record of the Type shown (MX or TXT).
2. 2Copy the Name with its copy button. Most DNS hosts want the short name, like send; if yours wants the full name, use the one shown under it, like send.northbeam.example.
3. 3Copy the Value. For the MX record, set the priority to the number shown (10).
4. 4Repeat for each record, save, then come back and choose Check DNS.

DNS changes usually show up within minutes, but can take a few hours. After Check DNS, the status reads Checking DNS while the records are looked up, and the page updates by itself.

Under From address, set the part before the @ (for example sign or contracts) and the Display name people see in their inbox. Leave the display name empty to use your company name. Recipients see shows exactly how it will look. Choose Save.

The address doesn't need a mailbox: replies go to the teammate who sent the document, not to this address. Pick one and keep it; a from address that stays the same builds trust with email providers over time.

DMARC tells email providers what to do with email that claims to be from your domain but fails the SPF and DKIM checks. Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook expect domains that send email to have one, and email without it is more likely to be filtered.

• Your domain has no DMARC record: add the one shown under DMARC, a TXT record named _dmarc with v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain. p=none only asks for reports, so it doesn't change how any of your email is delivered. Change the address after rua=mailto: to a mailbox you read, or remove that part.
• Your domain already has one: the status reads Found and shows it. Keep it; there's nothing to add. If you send from a subdomain, the policy of your main domain covers it.

Once the reports show that all your email passes, your IT team can tighten the policy to p=quarantine and later p=reject, which stops others from sending email that pretends to be from your domain.

Tally Sign checks your domain's status when you open Settings, every hour in the background, and right away if our email provider refuses an email from it. If the domain stops passing its check (for example, someone removed a DNS record), emails don't stop: they go out from the shared address, as "Your company via Tally Sign", until it's fixed. Nothing waits and nothing is lost.

1. 1Open Settings → Email and read the warning under Sending domain. Records that can't be found are marked Not found.
2. 2Put those records back at your DNS host, exactly as shown.
3. 3Choose Check DNS. Once it reads Verified, emails come from your domain again.

To stop using your domain, choose Remove next to it. Emails come from the shared address again. You can add the domain later, and it will need the DNS records and Check DNS again.

Signing emails have everything spam filters look at closely: a link to open, often a PDF attached, and a sender the recipient may never have heard from. The usual reasons one lands in spam or quarantine:

• It comes from a shared address instead of your own domain, so the recipient's email provider can't tie it to your company.
• Your domain has no DMARC policy, or its SPF and DKIM records are missing or wrong.
• The recipient's company filters email from outside senders strictly (Microsoft 365 quarantine, Mimecast, Proofpoint and similar tools often hold messages with links for review).
• It's the first email the recipient has had from that address.
• Many emails went out at once to people who weren't expecting them, or earlier ones were marked as spam.

1. 1Verify your own domain in Settings → Email, as above. This helps more than anything else.
2. 2Add a DMARC policy to your domain, or check that it already has one.
3. 3Tell the recipient it's coming. A quick note that a document is on its way from your address helps them find it, and gets them to open it instead of ignoring it.
4. 4Ask recipients to allow the address. They can add it to their contacts or safe senders list. For a company that quarantines outside email, ask their IT team to allow your from address (or your domain) in their email filter.
5. 5Check the activity log on the document to see whether and from which address each email went out (next section).
6. 6Share the link directly if an email still can't be found: open the document and choose Copy link next to the recipient, then send it to them yourself.

Every document's Activity, on its page in Tally Sign, records each email: who it went to, when, and the address it came from.

• Emailed … from sign@yourcompany.com: it left from your own domain.
• Emailed … from the shared address: your domain wasn't verified at that moment, so the email used the shared address.
• Not emailed: it didn't go out. Email may not be set up, or our email provider refused the recipient's address. Use Copy link to share the link yourself.