Setting up your email

This page was printed on May 30, 2023. For the current version, visit https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/setup-your-email.

From receiving important notifications to communicating with your customers, email is an important part of any business. This page shows you how to set up and configure both your store owner email and your sender email.

The store contact address is the email address that you used when you signed up for Shopify. It's where you'll receive your files if you export your products, orders, or customer lists.

The sender email is your customer-facing address. It's where your customers can contact you directly, and it's the address that's associated with the automatic notification emails that they receive about their orders.

Add CNAME records to your domain to connect to the Shopify Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) records to ensure that your email message is delivered to your customer.

On this page

Change the store email address

By default, the store contact address is the email address that you use when you sign up for Shopify. It's the email address that Shopify uses to contact you and where you receive your files if you export your product, order, or customer lists. If you want Shopify to contact you at a new email address, this is where you can update that information.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.
  1. From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
  2. Scroll to the Store settings section.
  1. From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
  2. Scroll to the Store settings section.

  1. Click Store details.

  2. In the Contact information section, click Edit.

  3. Change your email address under Store contact email or Account email. Shopify uses this email to contact you about your account.

  4. Click Save.

  5. Go to your new email account's inbox, and click the link in the verification email from Shopify.

Change your sender email address

The sender email is your customer-facing email address. This is the email address that is displayed in the From field when your customers receive automatic notification emails, order confirmation emails, and any marketing emails sent from Shopify. Some domains might require additional authentication, otherwise your sender email address might appear with via shopifyemail.com, or as store@shopifyemail.com.

If your sender email address is DMARC protected, then your email address might appear in inboxes as store@shopifyemail.com or store@shopify.com. Replies from your customers will be forwarded to your chosen sender email address. You can update your sender email address in your Shopify admin.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.
  1. From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
  2. Scroll to the Store settings section.
  1. From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
  2. Scroll to the Store settings section.

  1. Click Store details.

  2. In the Contact information section, click Edit.

  3. Change your email address under Sender email.

  4. Click Save.

  5. In the Contact information section, click View email settings.

  6. Follow the prompts to either authenticate your email domain, or verify your email.

Learn more about Shopify Email.

Using a forwarding address as your sender email

If you have a Shopify-managed custom domain, then you can use a forwarding email address from your custom domain as the Sender email from your store.

Steps:

  1. Set up email forwarding to create a custom email address associated with your domain for your customers to contact. For example, if you own the domain johns-apparel.com, then configure email forwarding so that if your customers email info@johns-apparel.com, then their messages get forwarded to your personal email john@gmail.com.
  2. Change your Sender email to your newly created forwarding email address. In the example above, you would change your Sender email to info@johns-apparel.com.

Customers will now receive your store notifications from the forwarding email associated with your custom domain. If they reply to your store's emails, then their message forwards to the personal email you configured in your email forwarding settings.

If your custom domain is cancelled or expires, then you will no longer be able to use the domain's forwarded email as your Sender email.

Ensuring that your email message is delivered to your customer

When you use a third-party domain, you need to verify your sender email address to ensure that your email message is delivered to your customers. To verify your sender email address, add CNAME records to your third-party domain to connects it to the Shopify SPF and DKIM records. Connecting your domain to the Shopify SPF and DKIM records prevents your email messages from being flagged as spam, or from failing to be delivered.

DKIM is an authentication method that's used by mail servers to verify that a message was not changed after it was sent.

SPF is an authentication method that validates that an email message comes from the domain that it claims to come from.

Add CNAME records to your third-party domain to connect to the Shopify SPF and DKIM records

You can help to ensure that your email message reaches your customer by adding CNAME records to your third-party domain to connect it to the Shopify SPF and DKIM records. If you need help to modify your CNAME records, then contact your domain provider.

Before you begin

To complete this procedure, you need to have the following information:

  • your login information for your third-party domain provider account
  • your sender email, which is the email address that you use to communicate with your customers

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings.
  1. From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
  2. Scroll to the Store settings section.
  1. From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
  2. Scroll to the Store settings section.

  1. Click Store details.

  2. In the Contact information section, click Edit.

  3. Click Fix this next to the Sender email field.

  4. On the Sender email page, click Authenticate.

  5. Follow the instructions to enter the new CNAME records into your third-party domain manager.

Changes can take up to 48 hours to complete. After your domain changes have taken effect, your domain status is Authenticated.

If the domain verification fails, then verify that the DNS records that you entered into your third-party domain provider match the records that were provided in your Shopify admin.

Email forwarding

Email forwarding is a service that lets you direct an email from your custom domain to an existing email account with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or another provider. For example, if you own the domain name johns-apparel.com, then you can create the sender email address info@johns-apparel.com. When customers email info@johns-apparel.com, their messages are forwarded to your connected personal account, for example, john@gmail.com.

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