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Email Sender Setup (Custom Domain)

How to verify your church's own domain so Inbox emails go from pastor@yourchurch.org instead of pastor@churchwiseai.com

By default, when you send an email from your Inbox — a visitor follow-up, a callback reply, a care message — it goes from pastor@churchwiseai.com. That works, but it looks like it's coming from a third party, not from your church. Some of your parishioners' email filters will treat it as suspicious.

You can fix that. Verify your church's domain (firstbaptist.org) and emails will go from pastor@firstbaptist.org instead. To your congregation, it looks (correctly) like the email is from you.

Where to Find It

Go to your admin dashboard → Settings tab → Email Sender (Custom Domain) section.

What You Need

  • A domain your church owns (e.g., firstbaptist.org — the same one your church website lives on)
  • The ability to add DNS records to that domain, OR access to whoever handles your church's website / email setup (often a volunteer, an IT person, or your webmaster)

That's it. You do not need to change where your church's existing email lives — verifying the domain for our sending doesn't interfere with the email accounts your staff already use.

Who Can Set It Up

Only the Admin role can add or remove a sending domain. Identity-level changes — like "which domain do our outbound emails come from" — should sit with whoever owns the church's online presence.

Office Admin can see the current state (so they know what's going on if a parishioner asks) and re-send the DNS records to your webmaster, but can't change the domain itself.

Other roles don't see this panel.

The Four States

The Email Sender panel walks you through a four-state setup process. Each state is clearly labeled at the top of the section.

1. Unverified (the starting point)

You'll see a text field that says Add your church's domain.

  1. Type your church's domain — just the domain, not an email address. So firstbaptist.org, not pastor@firstbaptist.org.
  2. Click Add Domain.

The system checks a few things first: that it looks like a real domain, that it's not a generic provider domain like gmail.com (which you can't verify because you don't own Gmail), and that no other ChurchWiseAI church has already verified it.

Once accepted, you move to the next state.

2. Pending (DNS verification)

The system shows you a list of DNS records you (or your webmaster) need to add to your domain. Each record is shown as a card with three pieces:

  • What it's for — a plain-English description of what the record does (e.g., "This DKIM record cryptographically signs emails sent from your domain so they aren't marked as spam").
  • The values — record type (TXT, CNAME, MX), name, and value, each with a copy button so you can paste them into your DNS console without typos.
  • Priority (for MX records only) — a small number.

You have two options for getting these records added:

Option A: Do it yourself. If you have access to your domain's DNS settings (Porkbun, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap, etc.), log in and add each record from the panel. Most pastors don't have this access — that's fine.

Option B: Email your webmaster. Click Email these records to my webmaster. A small form pops up asking for their email address. The system sends a friendly, pre-formatted email with all the DNS records plus a plain-English explanation of what they're for. You can check Cc me to get a copy yourself. Most webmasters can add these records in 5-10 minutes.

After the records are added to your DNS, it can take up to 48 hours for them to propagate worldwide. Usually it's much faster (10-30 minutes). Click Check verification in the panel any time to poll our email provider and see if they're visible yet.

You can also Remove and start over from this state if you typed the wrong domain or want to try a different one — your DNS console doesn't get touched, just our record of the pending domain.

3. Verified

Once DNS verification succeeds, the panel turns green and shows:

  • ✅ Verified — sending from pastor@firstbaptist.org
  • The exact From address that will appear on your outbound emails
  • The date you verified

From this moment on, every email the Inbox sends — visitor replies, callback follow-ups, welcome messages, care notes — comes from your verified address. To you, nothing visibly changes in how you use the Inbox. To your parishioners, suddenly emails look like they're from their church (which they are), and email filters trust them.

The DNS records table is still visible (collapsed by default) so you can re-send them to your webmaster if your IT setup ever changes.

4. Failed (rare)

Sometimes verification fails. The panel turns amber with a plain-English explanation:

  • "DNS records aren't visible yet" — most common. Wait, try Check verification later. DNS propagation can take up to 48 hours.
  • "Some DNS records don't match what we expect" — your webmaster added them slightly wrong (extra spaces, wrong record type). Compare what's in DNS to what's in the panel.
  • "We can't find that domain" — did you spell it right? Try removing and re-adding.
  • "This domain has been blocked" — rare; this happens if the domain has been flagged for spam in the past. Contact support.

Most failure modes resolve themselves once DNS finishes propagating. If a failure persists for more than a day, we get alerted on our end and someone will reach out to help.

Removing Your Sending Domain

If you want to go back to sending from pastor@churchwiseai.com (because you're switching domains, or your church name changed, or anything else):

  1. Click Remove domain at the bottom of the Verified panel.
  2. Confirm the prompt — it'll remind you that emails will go back to the ChurchWiseAI default address.
  3. You're back to Unverified.

Your DNS records can stay where they are (they won't hurt anything). You can re-verify the same domain later without redoing them.

What This Feature Doesn't Do

A few things on purpose:

  • One domain per church. You can have one verified sending domain. Not two, not three. If your church has multiple campus identities, pick the primary one.
  • Root-domain only. Verify firstbaptist.org, not mail.firstbaptist.org. Subdomains aren't supported yet.
  • No per-staff-member From addresses. Emails go from a single address for your church (typically pastor@yourchurch.org), regardless of which team member sent the reply. The team member is recorded internally, but the From line is one identity.
  • No auto-fallback. If your DNS gets broken upstream after verification (your IT team rotates records by accident), we keep trying to send from the verified address and you'll see bounces. We don't silently switch back to pastor@churchwiseai.com because that would mask a problem you need to know about. Our team gets alerted on high bounce rates and will reach out to help.

A Note for Healthcare Verticals

If you're using ChurchWiseAI as a healthcare-adjacent vertical (DentalWiseAI is the first), the setup is the same, but there are extra compliance considerations. The verified domain must be one your practice owns directly — not a shared parent (a denominational office, a corporate parent). The system enforces this for you. We won't onboard a healthcare customer until our Business Associate Agreements with Resend, Telnyx, and Supabase are signed (that's our side of the work).

Why Bother

Custom-domain email isn't a vanity feature. Three concrete benefits:

  1. Deliverability. Gmail and Outlook trust emails from a domain that matches the church's known identity. Generic third-party domains land in spam folders more often.
  2. Brand trust. Your parishioners recognize firstbaptist.org and read the email. churchwiseai.com is unfamiliar — they treat it as outreach from a stranger and might delete it without opening.
  3. Reply path. When a parishioner replies to your Inbox email, the reply goes to your church's email (which you can read), not to ChurchWiseAI's inbox. Nothing gets lost in a third party's system.

The whole setup, once your webmaster adds the DNS records, takes about an hour of waiting for DNS to propagate. Then you never think about it again.

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