How to best configure SPF records to work with EZRentOut

In EZRentOut, system generated emails are sent from no-reply@ezrentout.com to customers. By default, emails regarding an equipment return date, or a booking starting date are sent from the EZRentOut domain.

You can choose to send these emails from an email address that belongs to you or your company. You can enable this feature from Settings → Company Settings –> Company Profile → System Generated Emails.

An email has a sender ‘From Email‘ address and a recipient ‘Reply to Email‘ address. You can set both of these addresses as your own email address OR you can only change the ‘Reply To Email’ address while keeping the ‘From Email’ address as no-reply@ezrentout.com.

To change the ‘From Email’ address, you need to set up the authorization in your DNS settings. This will send EZRentOut alerts on your behalf. When changing the ‘From Email’ address, hit ‘Verify SPF Settings’ to avoid any error (These settings may take up to 48 hours to take place).

The configuration process has been explained below.

Note: Domains that belong to you or your company can be configured on your EZRentOut account. Popular SMTP servers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail are not supported.

What is an SPF Record?

An SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record is a list of servers that are allowed to send e-mails from your domain. This reduces spam activity that may be perceived to originate from your domain, which is known as source address spoofing. Also, it will drive the traffic directly to your domain. SPF records are really just a simple list of “approved” servers that are allowed to send e-mail from your domain.

Configuring SPF Records

To create an SPF record for a domain:

Log in to the administrative console for your domain.
Locate the page from which you can update the DNS records. You may need to enable advanced settings.
Create a TXT record containing this text: v=spf1 mx a ptr ip4:54.208.123.254 a:ezrentout.com ~all – Publishing an SPF record that uses -all instead of ~all may result in delivery problems. – Your registrar may also require a host setting (such as @)
Save your changes. Keep in mind that changes to DNS records may take up to 48 hours to propagate throughout the Internet.

Note: Multiple TXT entries for SPF records is not recommended and may cause delivery and spam classification issues. Rather, merge your pre-existing SPF record with our recommendation

If you have difficulty creating an SPF record, contact your domain provider for assistance.

Businesses often need to set up and prioritize email alerts at different stages of their workflow. You can also use different email addresses for sending out alerts on Purchase and Work Orders. These email addresses can be applied to both the ‘From’ and ‘Reply To’ addresses. Go to Settings → Company Settings –> Company Profile → System Generated Emails. Click the Edit button in the Actions column.

Here, you can define whether you want to use an admin email address, a custom email address (e.g. info@ehbicycles.com), or the email address of a prompter (the user who triggered an action on a purchase or work order). Again, when changing the ‘From Email’ address, hit ‘Verify SPF Settings’ to avoid any error (These settings may take up to 48 hours to take place).

Note: For these settings to work properly, Purchase Orders and Work Orders must be enabled in Settings → Add Ons.

Types of Email Alerts

To see the type of email alerts that can be sent out to Admins/Account Owners/Staff Users once you configure the ‘From Email’, click here. To see the type of email alerts that will be sent out to Customers once you configure the ‘From Email’, click here.

Verifying your SPF Settings

To verify your SPF Settings, we recommend using this tool: https://mxtoolbox.com/spf.aspx

Simply enter your domain name and hit ‘SPF Record Lookup’. In the example below, we were able to successfully verify one of our model rental stores pocketpointofsale.com: