Connecting your first email address

Plan requirement

Subscription Any plan
Access Admin

Getting your own support address to land in Zendesk, and the two DNS records that decide whether your replies reach anyone.

How it works

Every account starts with an address at your Zendesk subdomain that already works. What you almost certainly want instead is your own, such as support at your own domain. That takes two halves: mail coming in, and mail going out.

Incoming: forward to Zendesk

  1. In Admin Center, go to Channels, then Talk and email, then Email, then Manage support addresses.
  2. Click Add address and choose Connect external address.
  3. Enter your own address. Zendesk shows you the target address to forward to.
  4. In your own mail system, set up forwarding from your address to that target.
  5. Send a test message and confirm a ticket appears.

Outgoing: two DNS records

Replies are sent by Zendesk but appear to come from your domain. Without proof that this is allowed, receiving mail servers treat them as suspicious and your answers land in spam.

  • SPF declares that Zendesk may send on your behalf.
  • DKIM signs the messages so they can be verified.

Zendesk shows the exact records to add, and verifies them for you once they are in place. Do not skip this because outgoing mail seems to work at first. Deliverability problems appear gradually and are hard to diagnose after the fact.

Test before you announce it

Send from an outside address, ideally one on a different mail provider from your own. Check that a ticket is created, that your reply arrives, and that replying again lands on the same ticket rather than opening a second one.

See also

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