Why you should add a CNAME record

Adding CNAME records increases the deliverability of your email campaigns and other emails sent from Vtiger’s servers.

Adding a CNAME record

For Email Campaigns

• Host: ecm-bounces
• Type: CNAME
• Points to: ca.vtiger.email

To watch a tutorial on how to add a CNAME record for Vtiger email campaigns, click here. 

Why CNAME records instead of SPF and DKIM

SPF has a limitation of 10 DNS querying mechanisms. Most commonly, people run into the ‘too many DNS lookups’ error because of many mechanisms in their domain SPF record.

For example, consider your domain has Google and Outlook SPF records along with Vtiger.

Google SPF record will take 4 out of 10 DNS query mechanisms with (include:_spf.google.com).

Outlook will take 3 with (include:spf.protection.outlook.com).

Vtiger will take 4 with (include:ca.vtiger.email).

That sums up to 11 (4+3+4 =11), and the limit of 10 is exceeded. As a result, you will see the ‘too many DNS lookups’ error.

Also, the SPF check will fail with a Permanent error. Thus, emails may not reach your intended recipients.

To fix SPF Identifier Alignment for DMARC

Vtiger email campaigns use ca.vtiger.email as the Return path domain to collect bounce messages. 

This address is used to parse bounce messages and display the bounce rate of your email campaigns. 

During the DMARC check, the Return path domain will not match with the From email address domain. So, SPF alignment will fail. 

To fix this issue, you have to add CNAME records.