Setting Up Sparkpost Account for Emails
Setting Up Sparkpost Account for Emails
- SparkPost is an Email Sending & Deliverability Platform.
- SparkPost is the world’s largest and most reliable email sender, delivering nearly 40% of all commercial email—that’s over 6 trillion sends annually—and also has the world’s largest email data footprint to help enterprise-level brands make data-driven decisions to improve their email performance.
- We will be focusing on the following:
- Getting Started guide
- Deliverability with IP-WarmUp Strategies can be found here https://support.sparkpost.com/docs/deliverability/ip-warm-up-overview/
Getting Started
Welcome to SparkPost! This guide describes the steps you’ll need to follow to start sending mail. We'll run through account setup and best practices to have in place before you begin sending. We'll also point out some useful resources along the way to help you get the best from SparkPost.
SparkPost is a developer-centric email delivery service. That means pretty much everything described in this guide can be done through the SparkPost API. If you'd like to just skip to the end, the SparkPost API documentation is worth a visit.
Note: SparkPost is available in multiple regions. "SparkPost" refers to the SparkPost service hosted in North America. "SparkPost EU" refers to the SparkPost service hosted in Western Europe. An account created with SparkPost cannot be used with SparkPost EU, and vice-versa. You may use accounts in both regions.
- Sign Up
First things first: sign up for your SparkPost account here (EU). After sign-up, we will send you a verification email; please do verify your email address so SparkPost can contact you if you need support later on and send you important service announcements.
- Preparing your "From" Address
The very first thing your recipients see when they open your email is your address in the From field, so it's important to set it properly from the get-go. In SparkPost, that means creating a sending domain, the domain name you'll use to send email from. We recommend using a subdomain like mail.myawesomedomain.com, but using a top-level domain is also allowed.
- Prerequisites
To create a sending domain in SparkPost, you will need ownership or administrative access to your domain name, for example: myawesomedomain.com. You will also need access to make DNS configuration changes through your domain registrar (or DNS provider) for your sending domain.
If you do not have a domain name, you'll need to purchase one to use with SparkPost. Please refer to your website address domain provider to assist in creating a subdomain (sending domain) for you, here is an example: your company website is www.fusiontechnologies.co.za, you now need to create a sub-domain called email.fusiontechnologies.co.za .
To set up your sending domain, add the domain to your SparkPost account, verify that you own it and wait a moment while our Compliance team runs a few quick checks. Follow the detailed steps below to get it done.
Note: SparkPost expects to see a legitimate web presence on each sending domain, so please ensure your website is accessible before adding a domain to your SparkPost account. If you use a subdomain, a legitimate web presence is only needed on the top-level domain.
Domain Setup
Step 1. Add the Domain
If you didn't add a sending domain during your sign-up process, you can add one now in the SparkPost app (EU). If you already added a domain, visit the Domains (EU) page to find your existing domain and click on the domain to complete the domain setup.
Step 2. Verify Domain
Before you can send mail using your domain, we need to verify that you own it. Adding a DNS record to your domain is the recommended way to complete this verification. In the DNS Verification section, you can find the TXT record Hostname and Value you need to add to your domain's DNS records.
If you are using a subdomain, we recommend you also add the CNAME record specified under the Bounce section. Top-level domains should skip this step and add a custom bounce domain.
Unfortunately, some DNS records take longer to update than others, even up to 24 hours. If you want, you can check to see if the DNS value has been updated using a service like Whats My DNS. Just be sure to use the correct hostname there, too.
Some providers are particular about how the hostname is entered, so please check with your domain provider to see if there are any special requirements for entering your DNS TXT record.
You're almost done! While you've been verifying ownership of your domain, the addition of this DKIM DNS record will also help your reputation as an email sender. DKIM is a widely-used email standard that most email services will use to verify that your emails were in fact sent by you and weren't intercepted or changed along the way.
Step 3. Final Review
Once your DNS record has been found, your domain's status will change to "Pending". This means the domain is in our final review process which will verify that the domain meets our best practice requirements. This usually takes just a few minutes, but can sometimes take up to an hour. Once the review is complete, the domain will be ready to send.
The rest of the functions regarding sending emails gets handled by SwitchTransact itself, we send emails and track their events and deliverability.
Get your API keys
- After you created your Sparkpost account and verified your sending domain, you need to provide the Sparkpost API keys to be able to create the Email Provider in SwitchTransact.
Step1. Log into your Account: https://login.sparkpost.com/
Go o the following section https://app.sparkpost.com/account/api-keys
Click on Create Key
Provide a name for your Key and set it to "All Permissions"
After you created your API key, click on Create API Key, and copy the key to a safe place. You will use this key to create your Sparkpost Email Provider on SwitchTransact, click here