Send email from your own domain with SendGrid

By default, Polzy sends email from its own shared account. Connect your SendGrid account and every email this workspace sends to participants — campaign invitations and reminders, thank-you and event emails, workflow emails and replies in a conversation — goes out through SendGrid, from an address on your own domain. People see a sender they recognise, and your domain's reputation is your own.

Before you start

You need:

• A workspace on Team or higher, and the Admin role in it.
• A SendGrid account, with the right to authenticate a domain and create an API key.
• Access to your domain's DNS, to add the records SendGrid gives you.
• The address you want to send from, such as surveys@acme.com, on that domain.

How Polzy uses SendGrid

• All participant email. Once you choose SendGrid for email, every email the workspace sends to participants goes through it. Polzy's own email — sign-in links, password resets, invoices — still comes from Polzy.
• Who it is from. The From Email you enter. The name and reply-to address set under Settings → Branding (Sender name and Reply-to address) take precedence over the From Name and Reply-To Email entered here.
• What it looks like. Nothing changes: emails keep your workspace's logo and colour.
• What it costs. SendGrid bills you for these emails. They do not count against your organization's monthly emails in Polzy.
• What comes back. With SendGrid's Event Webhook, each message's log shows whether it was delivered, opened, clicked or bounced.

Step 1: Authenticate your domain in SendGrid

Mail providers such as Gmail and Outlook trust an email when the domain it comes from says the sender may use it. Three DNS records do that: SPF names the servers allowed to send for your domain, DKIM signs each message so it cannot be altered, and DMARC tells receivers what to do when a message fails both. SendGrid's domain authentication sets up all three.

1. In SendGrid, go to Settings → Sender Authentication and click Get Started under Domain Authentication.
2. Choose your DNS host and enter the domain to send from, such as acme.com.
3. Keep Use automated security on. SendGrid shows the records to add: CNAME records for SPF and DKIM, and a TXT record for DMARC.
4. Add them at your DNS host exactly as shown, then click Verify in SendGrid. DNS changes can take a while to be seen; verify again later if they are not found yet.

Your From Email must be a verified sender: an address on the authenticated domain is verified automatically. Verifying a single address instead (Single Sender Verification) also works, but authenticating the domain gives better delivery.

See SendGrid: Configure domain authentication and SendGrid: Authenticate a single sender. Gmail requires SPF or DKIM from every sender, and DMARC as well from anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day: see Google: Email sender guidelines.

Step 2: Create an API key

1. In SendGrid, go to Settings → API Keys and click Create API Key. Name it Polzy.
2. Choose Full Access, or Custom Access with Mail Send on. Polzy checks the key by reading your SendGrid user profile, so a custom key also needs read access to your user account; a key with Mail Send alone does not pass the test.
3. Click Create & View and copy the key, which starts with SG.. SendGrid shows it once.

See SendGrid: API keys.

Step 3: Connect SendGrid in Polzy

1. Open the place to connect it:
   • On Team: Messages, then the Integrations tab. Under Providers, find SendGrid and click Set up.
   • On Business and up: Integrations in the sidebar, the Available tab, then Connect on SendGrid's row.
2. In the Connect SendGrid panel, fill in the fields:

1. Click Test connection. You should see Connected to SendGrid as and the email address of your SendGrid account.
2. Click Connect.

Integration

Connect SendGridKeys are encrypted and only used on your behalf.

2 of 2 required

Credentials

Webhook URL tokenOptional

Event webhook verification keyOptional

SendGrid API KeyRequired

From EmailRequired

From NameOptional

Reply-To EmailOptional

Encrypted at restTest connectionConnect

Step 4: Choose SendGrid for email

Connecting SendGrid does not switch your email over yet. Choose it once for the workspace:

1. Open Settings, then the Notifications tab, and scroll to Channels.
2. On the Email row, change Polzy · shared account to SendGrid.
3. Make sure the switch on the row is on.

Channels

Channels appear here once a provider is connected under Connect. Until then, Polzy sends on its own shared account with a lower daily cap.

EmailOnInvitations, reminders and conversation replies. · 1,240 sent · 30dSendGrid

SMSOffShort invitations for people without a desk. · not sendingPolzy · shared account

WhatsAppOffTwo-way messages through a Business number. · not sendingPolzy · shared account

SlackOffChannel posts and direct messages to admins. · not sendingNo provider connected

TeamsOnPosts into a Teams channel your workspace watches. · not sendingNo provider connected

From now on every email the workspace sends goes through SendGrid.

Step 5: Get delivery statuses back

Without this step, emails still go out, but their log stops at Sent. With it, Polzy learns from SendGrid what happened to each one.

1. In Polzy, open Integrations, click SendGrid's row to open its page, and find Receiving. Copy the address shown there. It contains the webhook token, so keep it private.
2. In SendGrid, go to Settings → Mail Settings, then Event Webhooks, and create a webhook.
3. Paste the address as the Post URL and select the events: processed, delivered, deferred, opened, clicked, bounced, blocked, dropped and spam reports.
4. Under Security features, turn on Enable Signed Event Webhook, and save.
5. Open the webhook again (Edit) and copy its verification key.
6. In Polzy, click Configure on SendGrid, paste it into Event webhook verification key and click Save.

Receiving

Give this address to SendGrid so it can report what happened to your messages.

Delivery receipts

Replies

Copy

In SendGrid, set this URL as the Event Webhook, switch signed event webhook on, and copy the verification key into the field above. For replies, point Inbound Parse at the same URL — keep it private, it is verified by its token alone.

Without the verification key, Polzy refuses every event from SendGrid as unsigned, and the Activity section of SendGrid's page shows Incoming message refused. See SendGrid: Event Webhook security features.

Opened and Clicked appear only when open and click tracking is on in SendGrid. A bounce, a block or a spam report marks the message Bounced; after a permanent bounce or a spam report, Polzy stops emailing that address from this workspace. A dropped message is marked Failed.

Replies. Every email SendGrid sends for Polzy carries your Reply-To Email, or the Reply-to address under Settings → Branding, as its reply address — replies in a Polzy conversation included. Those replies therefore reach that mailbox, not the conversation in Polzy. To bring them in, receive the reply address's domain with SendGrid's Inbound Parse and point it at the same address: a reply from someone with an open email conversation is then added to that conversation. Leave POST the raw, full MIME message unticked. See SendGrid: Configure the Inbound Parse webhook.

Test it

Send a small campaign with only yourself in the audience (see Send a survey with a campaign). Then open Messages: your email should move from Sent to Delivered, and to Opened when you open it. Open the email's details in your mail app to check that SPF, DKIM and DMARC say pass.

Troubleshooting

Good to know

• If SendGrid stops working, Polzy keeps trying it, because the next attempt may work, and marks it Needs attention. If you disconnect it, or your plan no longer includes your own email sender, email goes back to Polzy's shared account and counts against your monthly emails again.
• One email sender at a time. The Email row takes one provider. You can connect another to have it ready, and switch on the row.
• Conversations. Without Inbound Parse, a reply to a conversation email lands in your reply-to mailbox under the person's own address — for an anonymous follow-up too, so whoever reads that mailbox sees who wrote. If your workspace uses conversations, Resend or Polzy's shared account keeps replies inside Polzy.
• What Polzy keeps. The API key, the webhook token and the verification key are stored encrypted and never shown again.

Useful links

• SendGrid: Configure domain authentication
• SendGrid: Authenticate a single sender
• SendGrid: API keys
• SendGrid: Event Webhook security features
• SendGrid: Configure the Inbound Parse webhook
• Google: Email sender guidelines