Email Whitelisting

The BrightArrow interface allows you to send emails as if they were coming from your own email domain. This is a great way to make sure your intended recipients see the message as something from you rather than something that looks like spam. While the email looks like it comes from you it actually is sent from the BrightArrow servers. This is a common technique used by phishing sites trying to trick people into clicking on a fake list to gather their personal information and as such many email clients will now see these emails as junk mail.

When you send through BrightArrow you are not phishing, you’re sending valuable information to specific people. In order to increase the likelihood of your message not being automatically added to someone’s spam folder we suggest updating your email service to know that you are allowing valid emails to come through our servers on your behalf.

The best solution is to add our SPF reference into your SPF record.  It is done in your DNS records in the form of a specially formatted TXT record.  Are you familiar with SPF records?

We have a consolidated SPF reference that you can use:

include:spf_target.brightarrow.com

For example, you could have the following as your entire SPF record if it contains Google and BrightArrow:

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:spf_target.brightarrow.com ~all

Once you have this SPF record in place, we also have to make a minor change on our side to change the originating address reference.  Let us know once you have updated your DNS record so we can change the email header accordingly from our side. 

One important point – we cannot be making our change until we hear from you that you have made your change.  Once you have verified your change is made, let us know and we’ll change it on our side and verify that the email header information is correct. 

Once your servers are updated and our servers are as well then many more of your recipients will receive your emails in their inbox rather than their spam folders.

We do not have specific directions for all DNS providers however we have put together an example for users of Network Solutions:

SPF Setup Instructions: Network Solutions

Sending from your domain vs replying to your domain

BrightArrow gives you the option of sending from your domain using our servers or allowing our servers to send as BrightArrow but setting the reply to portion of the email to your domain. There are pros and cons to each. Below are some things to keep in mind when making that decision for yourself.

Default Setting - send and reply using default BrightArrow address

By default the servers will send as Notification-Do_Not_Reply@brightarrow.com. Do nothing to set this up.

Sending as your own domain

By adding our information to your spf record (see above) we can send email from our server as if we are your server. Once the SPF record is updated and someone from BrightArrow has made the necessary changes you can change your default email addresses in the user settings as seen below.

Using your domain as the reply to

The third option is a hybrid of these. You do not need to update your spf record as the server will continue to use the Notification-Do_Not_Reply@brightarrow.com email address as the sender. However the email address from your domain will be used as the reply to address. In this way bounces come back to us and can be included in the report but real replies get sent back to you.