Why Magento Stores Have Email Deliverability Problems
Magento 2 and Adobe Commerce send transactional email through the server's local MTA (Postfix, sendmail) by default. This means your order confirmations, invoice emails, and shipping notifications go out from your server's IP — with no DKIM signature and often no SPF alignment.
For enterprise stores handling thousands of orders, this is a serious risk. Gmail and Outlook increasingly reject or spam-filter unauthenticated email, and with Google's 2024 bulk sender requirements now enforced, missing authentication directly impacts deliverability at scale.
Agencies managing Magento stores for clients face an additional challenge: each client domain needs its own authentication records, and broken records on one store can affect the agency's overall sender reputation if shared IPs are involved.
Magento Email: What You Need to Configure
SPF for Magento
Your SPF record needs to authorize your actual sending infrastructure. For most Magento setups this means your transactional ESP (SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, Postmark) plus any marketing tools.
v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net include:amazonses.com ~all
If you're still using the server's local MTA, include your hosting provider's SPF record — or better, switch to a dedicated transactional ESP. Local MTAs have poor deliverability and no DKIM support out of the box.
DKIM for Magento
Magento doesn't handle DKIM natively. DKIM signing needs to happen at the transport layer — meaning your SMTP provider. Configure your domain in SendGrid, Mailgun, or Amazon SES and add the CNAME records they provide to your DNS.
In Magento admin, go to Stores → Configuration → Advanced → System → Mail Sending Settings and configure SMTP transport to route through your ESP instead of local sendmail.
DMARC
Add a TXT record to _dmarc.yourdomain.com:
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]
For enterprise stores, DMARC reporting is especially valuable — it shows you if any third-party tools or misconfigured systems are sending email from your domain without authorization.
Common Deliverability Issues for Magento Stores
Magento's default sendmail configuration has no DKIM signing and uses the server IP — which is often shared and may already be blacklisted. Configure SMTP transport to use a dedicated ESP. This is the single biggest deliverability improvement for most Magento stores.
Multi-store Magento setups often have different sending configurations per store view. If different stores use different ESPs, all of them need to be in your SPF record. Exceeding 10 DNS lookups causes SPF to silently fail — audit your record regularly.
Migrating from one ESP to another (e.g. Mailgun to SendGrid) requires updating DNS records. Old CNAME records from the previous provider become stale and DKIM fails. Run a check after any ESP change.
Each client domain needs its own SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configuration. A misconfiguration on one client's domain doesn't automatically affect others — but if you use shared sending IPs, a blacklisting event on one account can impact all. CheckLab's Pro plan lets you monitor up to 10 domains from one account.
How to Monitor Deliverability for Magento at Scale
For agencies and enterprise teams, manual checks aren't practical. Magento environments are complex — multiple store views, multiple ESPs, frequent deployments that can touch DNS or SMTP configuration.
CheckLab monitors your domains every 24 hours and sends an immediate alert when SPF, DKIM, DMARC, or blacklist status changes. No dashboards to check, no manual verification — just an alert when something needs attention.
The Pro plan covers up to 10 domains. If you manage more than 10 client domains, join the Agency waitlist — we're building a plan with 50+ domain monitoring and white-label PDF reports.
Check your Magento store's email deliverability
SPF, DKIM, DMARC and blacklist check in seconds. Free, no signup required.
Check your domain → Free · No signup · Results in seconds