With this option, Fastmail hosts your DNS — you point your nameservers to us, and we automatically make sure the rest of your DNS is set up correctly.
We provide a control panel for full customization of your DNS records. Our nameservers are fast, reliable, and secure, and you can easily manage your DNS through our simple but powerful interface!
Initial setup must be done on the control panel supplied by your domain registrar. On this help page, we'll provide the values you will need to set up your DNS with your domain registrar to make sure mail is delivered correctly.
There are three general steps involved:
Additional information:
We also have guides for setting up your domain's nameservers with some common domain registrars:
- Setting up your NS with Namecheap
- Setting up your NS with Gandi
- Setting up your NS with Name.com
- Setting up your NS with GoDaddy
- Setting up your NS with Enom
1. Add your domain
You will first need to add your domain in Fastmail using the domain setup wizard on the Settings → Domains screen.
Click the Add or buy domain button, then choose the Use a domain you already own option. This will bring up the domain wizard. Type your domain into the box. We will detect whether your domain has been registered or not. It's important that the domain has already been registered by you at a domain registrar; otherwise you won't be able to make the necessary changes.
Follow the on-screen prompts to continue adding your email addresses and setting up your domain. At the end, we will generate the instructions that match your situation. The general instructions for editing your nameserver records are below.
Please note: If you are on a legacy plan, the domain setup wizard can only set up email addresses, not users. You will need to add users manually in order to create additional user accounts at your custom domain.
2. Update your NS records
Note: Updating your DNS can take some time: we recommend updating it at a time you don't expect many emails.
Log in to the control panel supplied by your domain registrar. Usually, this will be the website from which you bought your domain.
Then, look for where you can change the DNS records for your domain. Set your NS records to:
-
ns1.messagingengine.comns2.messagingengine.com
These should be the only two NS records listed for your domain.
Once this has been done, go to Settings → Domains, click Recheck DNS on your domain, and we'll show you if everything is set up correctly.
3. Add email addresses at your domain
Email addresses for your domain can be added during the domain setup process. If you need to add additional email addresses at a later date, these can be added in the Settings → My email addresses screen. You may also choose to add a catch-all address if one was not already set up with the domain, so that any mail addressed to your domain comes to you, no matter what address is used.
You can customize other settings too, such as your signature.
If you'd like to set up your account to send using one of your custom domain addresses by default:
- Go to Settings → Mail preferences.
- Go to the Compose section.
- Click the dropdown menu under Default address and select the domain.
Double checking the DNS changes
How long until it's working?
Depending on the TTL values for your previous DNS settings (if any), it may take up to a day for the changes to propagate across the internet. Normally it's a lot faster: just a matter of minutes. Once your domain is set up correctly and active on Fastmail, messages sent to the addresses you added should now arrive in your Inbox.
How do I know it's right?
Your Settings → Domains screen shows a green tick when it has detected that your DNS entries are complete and correct. Any lingering issues are marked with a red exclamation point and a recommendation on how to resolve this issue.
Optional domain set up
System email addresses
The email standard requires that the email address postmaster@yourdomain.com be a valid email address. Because of this, even if you don't set up that address, we will deliver any email sent to that address to the owner of the domain.
It's also best practice to support abuse@yourdomain.com. By default, if you don't set up your own address for abuse@yourdomain.com, we'll automatically direct all email sent to abuse@yourdomain.com to our abuse handling system.
Subdomain addressing and mail routing
On the Settings → Domains screen, you can control subdomain addressing and mail routing. To see these options, click the Edit button next to your domain, then find the Routing section and click Manage.
The Subdomain addressing options section lets you control how Fastmail handles subdomain addressing for your domain. For more information on subdomain addressing, please see our Plus addressing and subdomain addressing help page.
The Routing section lets you choose how mail to this domain is handled.
- Internal routing: Fastmail is handling all of your mail activities. This provides proper loop detection preventing inadvertent mail loops (via addresses or forwarding) that could cause spam or over-quota usage. While in this state, the DNS records for the domain are only checked every day.
- External routing: Some or all of your email activities are hosted elsewhere; whether this is the mail itself or things like mailing lists. No loop detection is possible. While in this state, the DNS records for the domain are checked every hour to see if they have changed.