If you want to send emails with TotalBrokerage, so it appears that it is coming from your account email, you can set up your custom email domain to verify that TotalBrokerage can send emails on behalf of your email server. This will allow you to preserve your branding.


Note: If you use a free email service such as @gmail.com or @yahoo.com, you can't use this feature as you won't have access to the account DNS settings.


Setting up records for your domain


The process of setting up an SPF record is different for different domain registrars. For example, here are the instructions for GoDaddy, Namecheap, 1&1, Network Solutions, and Google Domains.


To create or edit an SPF record to reference TotalBrokerage

  • Edit your domain's DNS settings to add a TXT record. The steps vary depending on your domain registrar. A TXT record is required for your SPF record to be validated.

TotalBrokerage recommends using the following SPF record:

v=spf1 ip4:149.72.161.142 ip4:149.72.157.92 ?all


Note: While we recommend using ?all because it's the least intrusive qualifier, you can use whichever qualifier you are comfortable with.


If you've already set up an SPF record for another purpose, add a reference to TotalBrokerage to it. The SPF specification requires that you only have one SPF record on your domain. If you have multiple records, it may cause issues, and cause rejections of your email.


For example, instead of having two separate records, such as v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ?all and v=spf1 ip4:149.72.161.142 ip4:149.72.157.92 ?all, combine them into one, like this:

v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ip4:149.72.161.142 ip4:149.72.157.92 ?all

Verifying your domain (Brokerage Manager access only)


In order for TotalBrokerage to send emails on your behalf, you must verify that you own the domain that you want TotalBrokerage to use. This is done by adding a TXT record (a domain verification record) to your DNS server that TotalBrokerage will check. The domain verification record is unique for each email domain.


If you don’t add the domain verification record, TotalBrokerage sends emails from a TotalBrokerage-provided email address. If you want to give your customers a white-label experience, hiding all TotalBrokerage branding, you must add this record.


To verify that a domain belongs to you:


1) Make sure you have finished setting up your SPF record.


2) Within TotalBrokerage, go to Setup → Brokerage → select the Email Domains tab.


3) Select Verify on the right side of the table for each brokerage account domain you wish to verify or select Verify Email Domains For All Accounts to batch verify all brokerage account domains at once. If it is successful, the item in the column Is this domain verified? will change to Yes.




Understanding SPF checks


Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is a domain-level email authorization protocol that allows you to declare which IP addresses are allowed to send emails as if they originated from your domain.


This is accomplished by adding Domain Name System (DNS) TXT record. Think of DNS as a publicly accessible record for the internet. This record enables you to state publicly that TotalBrokerage is an authorized sender for your domain.


When an email client receives a message, it performs an SPF check on the sending domain to verify that the email came from who it says it did. If this check fails, or there isn't a DNS record that says that TotalBrokerage is a permitted sender, some receivers might consider that email spam or a phishing attempt, and flag it as untrustworthy or not display it to your customers at all.


TotalBrokerage avoids this by sending emails using our own domain when we're not authorized to use your domain, and by using your domain only when you authorize TotalBrokerage with a proper SPF record. Generally, this helps to prevent emails from your TotalBrokerage account to your customers from being incorrectly marked as spam.