Use Custom Domain Records With Your Dedicated IP

If your Mailchimp account has a dedicated IP address, consider adding custom records to your sending domain. When you add custom records, email campaigns will appear to come directly from your domain instead of a Mailchimp domain. This gives you more control over your domain's sending reputation.

In this article, we'll show you how to configure domain records for use with dedicated IPs.

Before you start

Here are a few things to know before you begin this process.

• This is an advanced feature intended for experienced marketers and developers.
• To use your dedicated IP, you need to create or edit domain records with your Domain Name Service (DNS) provider. If you don't know who your DNS provider is, reach out to your hosting service.
• You must use a subdomain (like mail.example.com) and not a root domain (like example.com). We suggest creating a unique subdomain specifically for this purpose. This subdomain should not be used for other purposes, such as hosting a website.
• To reduce testing and configuration time, set a low value for your domain's TTL (time-to-live).

How it works

Even with a dedicated IP, the headers of your emails still show that they were sent from Mailchimp's servers. If you choose to update your DNS records to correspond with your dedicated IP, we'll then automatically update our corresponding records for that IP. After the process is complete, your email header will show that the email was sent from your domain.

This process results in more control over how your email sending reputation is perceived by ISPs (Internet Services Providers), and can improve your email marketing's DMARC compliance and delivery rates.

Configure DNS records

To configure your domain records for use with a dedicated IP address, follow these steps.

1. Click your profile icon and choose Account.

2. Click the Extras drop-down and choose Custom DNS.
   
   This will take you to the Custom DNS configuration page, where you'll see your dedicated IP address.

3. Click Configure.
   

4. Enter your subdomain and click Save.
   

5. Copy the A record, TXT record, and MX record values then paste them into the corresponding records for your subdomain. For the MX record, set a priority of 10.
   

6. Click I'm Finished.
   

7. When all the records are validated, click the Done button to go back to the Custom DNS configuration page.

8. To enable the custom DNS feature, toggle the slider to the checkmark.
   
   The screen will refresh and display a success message.
   

Disable dedicated IP address

If you want to disable your dedicated IP, contact our Support team for assistance.

Mailchimp Support Options