Requirements and DNS done right

These prerequisites are unspectacular, but they decide whether your mail later lands in the inbox or in spam. Invest the ten minutes before the first send — not afterwards during a support incident.

What you need

• WordPress access. Administrator rights for plugins, settings and tests.
• Email provider. SMTP credentials or an API key for the provider of your choice.
• DNS access. SPF, DKIM and DMARC must be maintained at the domain host.
• Test mailbox. At least one external recipient (Gmail, Outlook, own mailbox) for real delivery tests.
• Staging. Use a test environment first for shops and live sites.
• Freemius account. For license, invoice, subscription, upgrade, downgrade and refunds.

The three DNS records in 60 seconds

• SPF declares which servers may send on behalf of your domain. Without SPF, your mail looks suspicious.
• DKIM cryptographically signs outgoing mail. Receivers can verify it was not tampered with.
• DMARC tells receivers what to do when SPF or DKIM fail: ignore, quarantine or reject.

Prepare a test mailbox

Don’t use the address you use in production. Create a dedicated address in Gmail or Outlook. Both expose detailed message headers that show SPF/DKIM/DMARC results at a glance.

Staging first

Concretely:

• A staging clone with external API cronjobs disabled.
• Sender addresses marked as test (for example noreply+staging@your-domain.tld).
• Anonymize real customer data or replace it with test fixtures.