Best Email Setup for Your Salesforce Organization (Gmail, Office 365, Email Relay, and Send through Salesforce)

Users can send emails through the following methods:

• Send through Gmail: Send end user emails in Salesforce using Gmail accounts.
• Send through Office 365: Send end users emails in Salesforce using Office 365 accounts.
• Send through Salesforce: Users can also send email through Salesforce without integrating with an external email service.
• Email Relay: Send Salesforce email through your company’s email server.

If your organization is using:

• Lightning Experience and Gmail, use Send through Gmail.
• Lightning Experience and Office 365, use Send through Office 365.
• Either Lightning Experience or Salesforce Classic, and owns the domain (mycompany.com), use either Send through Salesforce or Email Relay.
• Either Lightning Experience or Salesforce Classic, and doesn’t own the domain (e.g. your email address ends in @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, etc.), use Send through Salesforce.
• Salesforce Classic and your email address ends in @gmail.com, @aol.com or @yahoo.com, you need to register for a domain that you control, and use this new domain for all of your emails sent from Salesforce due to the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) policy at Gmail, AOL and Yahoo. Please review this article for more information: Salesforce Outbound Emails Impacted by Google DMARC Policy Adoption

Considerations for Using Send through Gmail and Send through Office 365

Additional considerations:

• Emails sent through workflows and triggers are still sent through Salesforce or Email Relay.
• Bounce management isn’t supported, so contacts and leads aren’t automatically updated with bounce information. However, you can view bounced emails in your email inbox. If you require bounce management, use Send through Salesforce instead.
• Email delivery information for Send through Gmail or Office 365 is not available in the email logs. Email logs should be obtained from Gmail or Office 365 instead.
• Email is sent securely through Transport Layer Security (TLS) to Gmail or Office 365 servers. Gmail or Office 365 settings control TLS from that point onwards.

Considerations for Using Email Relay

Additional considerations:

• For bounce management to work, your email server must allow the relaying of email sent from Salesforce.
• Salesforce send limits still apply to email relaying.
• Email relaying requires some technical expertise to set up.

Considerations for Using Send through Salesforce

Additional considerations:

• Emails may be flagged as spam by certain email providers if email authentication is not configured properly following the recommendations below.
• If your company doesn’t own the domain or has bounce management enabled, emails you send may be identified as being sent through Salesforce instead of your inbox:

• Gmail recipients will see the links if “Enable compliance with standard email security mechanisms” or Bounce Management is enabled. For more, please review Extra info next to sender’s name.
• Outlook and email clients supporting Sender ID will see “Sent on behalf of [sender name]” if “Enable Sender ID compliance” is enabled.

• If your company owns the domain, note that setting up email authentication methods like Sender Policy Framework (SPF) or DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) in your DNS will ensure better  delivery and acceptance by recipients.  

Setup Recommendations for Send through Salesforce

1. Turn OFF “Enable compliance with standard email security mechanisms”
2. Turn OFF "Enable Sender ID compliance"
3. Add Salesforce’s SPF record to client’s domain DNS to indicate that Salesforce is an approved sender e.g SPF record: "v=spf1 mx include:_spf.salesforce.com ~all". For more, please review Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Salesforce SPF records.
4. Set up DKIM for better deliverability. For more, please review Create a DKIM Key.

1. Turn ON “Enable compliance with standard email security mechanisms”
2. Turn OFF “Enable Sender ID compliance”. We recommend enabling Sender ID compliance only if you have recipients using the Sender ID email authentication protocol, which isn’t widely used.