Setting up your own email domain for a sports club
Most of the club area you fill in during one sitting. Members, teams, venues, jobs: type it in and you are done. On one point it goes differently, and that is email. Before a single message can go out, your club's domain has to be connected — and it is the one part where you briefly need somebody else.
Post from a familiar sender gets opened
Have a look at your own inbox. A message from an address you recognise, you open. A message from an address you have never seen goes past with half an eye, or never reaches your inbox at all. That difference is exactly the difference between post that comes from your own club address and post that comes from an unknown service with your club's name above it.
For a call for volunteers, an invitation to the members' meeting or a message about a closed hall, that is not a detail. You send a message like that once. How many members open it depends to a large extent on what is in that sender line.
That is why club email in Koach works one way only: every club sends from its own domain. Not from a Koach address with your name in front of it, but from your own name, with your own reputation behind it. That asks for one action the rest of the club area doesn't, and this article walks through it step by step.
Why Koach doesn't simply send it itself
Technically it would be easier. Koach could send all club post from one address of its own, with the club's address underneath as the reply address. That works — until the first time it goes wrong.
Email runs on reputation. When a recipient presses the button for spam, that is not a complaint about that one message: it is a black mark against the whole domain the message came from. Enough of those complaints and post from that domain lands in everybody's spam folder. If all club post ran through one Koach address, one unluckily-mailing club would drag down the post of every other club. Worse: that same domain also carries the login codes everyone uses to get into the app. A blocked spam folder would then not mean you miss a newsletter, but that you can't get in at all.
With a domain per club, that risk sits where it belongs. If something goes wrong at your club, it hits your sender address and nobody else's. And the other way round: if you build a good name, it is yours.
So the app refuses to send as long as the domain has not been approved. There is no fallback and no temporary address: if the domain isn't ready, the send button stays away and the mail screen shows the note that you have to connect the domain first.
What you need before you start
Three things, and the third is usually why this doesn't take five minutes.
- A domain that belongs to the club. In practice that is your website's domain. You don't have to buy anything new and your website doesn't change.
- Access to that domain's DNS settings. DNS is the address book of the internet: it tells the rest of the world which computers belong to your domain name, and shortly also who may send mail on your behalf. Those settings sit with whoever the domain runs through — the hosting company, the place the domain name is registered, or the agency that built the site.
- The person who can get in there. At most clubs that is not somebody on the board but the volunteer or the agency that maintains the website. Count on needing that person. It is a ten-minute job for somebody who does it regularly, but you have to get hold of them first.
Is that person not sitting next to you? Then run through the first step in the app anyway. After that you have exactly the records you need to send them, and that is a far more concrete request than asking whether they can do something with your email.
Who may do it in the app: a club administrator. The sender address decides on whose behalf post goes out to the entire membership, so that button is not in every coach's hands.
Connecting the domain in the app
Open your profile and tap Club dashboard. In the bar at the top choose Email. There you first find two fields about the shape of your post — the sender name recipients see and the address replies go to — and below them the Own domain block.
- Type the domain into the field: the domain name on its own, without https:// in front and without a slash after it. The field shows an example of the form the app expects. Paste a complete web address anyway and the input is refused with that example next to it — deliberately, because you will shortly have to find exactly this domain at your web provider.
- Tap Connect domain.
- The block changes. You now see the address the post will come from, with the status Waiting for the records underneath, and under that a list of the records that have to be set at your domain.
Nothing has changed at your domain yet and no post can go out. What did happen: the mail service behind Koach has prepared the records with which you can prove the domain really is yours.
One domain per club. As long as a domain is connected, the input field is gone — so you cannot accidentally put a second one next to it. If you want to move to a different domain later, you first tap Disconnect domain. The app asks whether you are sure, with the warning that no post can go out until a new connection is made. And connecting a Koach domain isn't possible: your post would then look exactly like post from the app.
Putting the records at your own provider
This is the part that happens outside the app. Under the heading Set these records at your domain sit a few blocks. Each block has three things: the record type at the top (TXT, MX or CNAME, sometimes with a priority number next to it), under it the name, and under that the value. The last two are both tappable: one tap and the text is on your clipboard, with Copied confirmed on screen. That is not a luxury — the signing key is a long, meaningless string of letters and digits, and you will not retype that on a phone without a mistake.
What the records do, in plain language: they tell the rest of the world that the mail service behind Koach may send on behalf of your domain, and they put a digital signature under every message that goes out. Without those two things anybody can send post that looks as though it came from you — which is exactly why receiving mail servers distrust post without those records.
At your web provider you log in and look for the section called DNS, DNS management or name servers. There you add a new record per block and paste the name and the value across. Three things to watch:
- Copy exactly. No extra space, no dropped full stop, no invented capitals. What is written there is not written there by accident.
- Some providers add the domain name for you. If the form only asks for the part in front of your domain name, don't paste the full name — otherwise your domain name ends up in there twice. If in doubt, look at a record that is already there and follow its shape.
- The time (TTL) can stay on the default. If nothing is filled in, leave it as it is.
In short: you add records, you don't replace any. Never remove an existing record to make room — your club's mail or website may be hanging off it. If you don't know what an existing record does, leave it and go and ask.
Checking, and what the status means
New DNS records are not visible everywhere straight away. Usually it is a matter of minutes, sometimes it takes up to an hour. Then go back to the mail screen and tap Check now. The app has the mail service look again and then shows the status:
- Ready to use. The records are right. From now on post can go out from your own address, and the button to write a message appears.
- Waiting for the records. Nothing has been found yet. That is normal in the first hour. The mail service keeps looking for another three days by itself, so you don't have to press the button every ten minutes.
- Not successful — check the records. Even after those three days nothing has been found. Something different is at your provider from what the app shows: half a value, a doubled domain name, or a record that was typed in but never saved. Put the two lists side by side, character by character.
If it stays on waiting while you are certain the records are in, check whether they are at the right domain. Clubs with two domain names, or with an old and a new hosting company, put them at the wrong one more often than you would think.
If it stops working later
A connected domain doesn't stay right by itself. The situation you see most often: the website is rebuilt or moves to another company, the DNS goes with it, and the records for the mail are not carried over. Mail has been going out fine for a long time, and that is exactly why nobody expects a problem.
Koach notices and puts sending on hold again, with the same message as at a new connection. That feels harsh, but the alternative is worse: post without a signature lands in the spam folder of a large part of your membership, and that is precisely the damage this whole arrangement was meant to prevent. Put the records back and tap Check now once more.
So write it into your agreements: whoever works on the website or the domain leaves the mail records alone. That belongs in the same handover document as the agreements about which member data you keep, which is what the rules around member data are about.
And while the domain isn't ready yet: you are not without a channel. A message that lands on every member's dashboard goes out as normal — those are the club announcements, and they need no domain. Email is the way to people who open the app less often; for the rest of the year the dashboard is often faster. How those two relate, and what else the club area does, is in the app for your volleyball club.
Arrange it once and it stays arranged: a short job for whoever manages your website, and from that moment your post arrives with your own name in front of it.
Frequently asked questions
Does the sender address have to be an existing mailbox at our provider?
No. The part before the @ doesn't have to exist as a mailbox at your provider; the app only uses it to send with. The consequence is that post somebody sends straight to that address arrives nowhere. So fill in the reply address above the domain block with an address that really is read — that may perfectly well sit with a different provider.
Can we use a subdomain instead of our main domain?
You can: a name like mail.yourclub.org is simply accepted. A subdomain like that does build its own reputation, separate from your website domain, and the sender address of your post will carry it too. Only a Koach domain is refused, because then your post could not be told apart from ours.
Do we lose everything if we disconnect the domain?
No. Disconnecting only removes the domain link; the sender name, the reply address, the signature and the list of previously sent messages all stay. What you do lose is the ability to send until a new domain is ready. If you connect again later, a fresh set of records comes with it — so compare those with what is still at your provider and update the old ones.
The app says this domain is already connected. How can that be?
That message comes from the mail service and means the same domain name is already in use somewhere else: at an earlier connection of your club, or on another account. Remove that existing connection first and then try again. If you get stuck — because nobody remembers where that connection sits, for instance — get in touch with Koach.
