Why can’t I use a non-business (@gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, etc.) as a sender email?
Free email address services usually have DMARC policies in place that are meant to prevent email scams but can cause delivery issues for legitimate businesses. Since you don’t own the domain, you do not have control over that domain’s delivery policies. Therefore, at Sender it‘s mandatory to use your own business email address as the sending address to boost deliverability and prevent delivery problems.
For example, if you would use [email protected] as the sender’s email address, the recipients’ mail server might identify your message as spam and move it to the SPAM folder or reject (bounce) your message completely.
How DMARC Applies to a Sender Identity
You will be asked to authenticate a domain when sending an email via a service provider such as SENDER. All major mail providers such as Google, Microsoft, and others implement DMARC to protect their customers and prevent abuse.
Let’s use Google’s Gmail and the email address [email protected] as an example.
Gmail has SPF, DKIM, and DMARC policies. These DNS records include only domains and IP addresses that Google specifically designates as belonging to Gmail.
When you send a message from [email protected] to [email protected] using SENDER, Yahoo mail server will then look up Gmail’s SPF and DKIM records because Google is the domain in the return-path message header.
The Yahoo receiving server will determine that the message was sent using a SENDER IP address and was not signed by Google’s private key. Both SPF and DKIM will fail, causing Yahoo email to employ the DMARC failure policy specified by Google.
Basically, Yahoo, or any other receiving email server, has no way of knowing whether you are using SENDER to send an email for legitimate purposes or spoofing Gmail’s domain.
That’s why SENDER imposes authenticating a domain. The SENDER domain authentication method provides CNAME records that you place on your domain to approve SENDER’S IP addresses. In addition to that, it will automatically manage your SPF and DKIM records, protecting your domain’s reputation.
Many of the popular email providers implement DMARC, including:
- AOL
- Gmail
- Microsoft (Hotmail, MSN)
- Outlook
- Yahoo
- And many others
That’s it!
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