What are the risks of sharing a sending domain with a partner and how does primary domain reputation affect others?
Summary
What email marketers say10Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum explains that sharing a domain with a partner can lead to blacklisting issues. If your partner engages in spam or poor sending practices, your emails may also be marked as spam due to the shared domain reputation.
Email marketer from StackExchange shares that shared sending infrastructure, including domains, can lead to deliverability problems if one user is blacklisted. It's essential to isolate sending activities to protect your reputation and ensure reliable delivery.
Email marketer from Quora answers that sharing a domain with a partner for sending emails can be risky. If the partner engages in spammy practices, it can negatively affect the domain's reputation, leading to your emails being flagged as spam even if you follow best practices. This can ultimately damage your deliverability rates.
Email marketer from Mailchimp shares that using a shared domain can negatively impact deliverability because your sending reputation is linked to the other users on that domain. Poor practices by other users can lead to blacklisting, affecting your email performance. It is recommended to use a dedicated domain.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares that since you have the primary domain, your reputation matters the most. So in case your reputation tanks, it could have an effect on their mailing too...to some extent.
Email marketer from EmailBlog.com shares that a bad domain reputation can affect the deliverability of all senders using that domain, even if some are following best practices. It’s crucial to monitor your domain reputation and take steps to protect it.
Email marketer from GMass warns that sharing email sending domains leads to issues with reputation and deliverability. They suggest that by using a shared domain, your ability to get emails delivered suffers as your deliverability rate is at the hands of others and the domain reputation.
Email marketer from SendGrid emphasizes that using a dedicated sending domain is crucial for maintaining a positive sender reputation. Sharing a domain introduces risks from other senders' activities, potentially harming your deliverability. They recommend domain authentication and monitoring.
Email marketer from MarketingCompany.blog explains that the single most important thing is that if a primary domain's reputation tanks it will impact all subdomains and associated sending addresses. It is vital to protect your reputation.
Email marketer from Reddit explains that if a primary domain's reputation tanks, it can impact all subdomains and associated sending addresses. Even if your sending practices are clean, the negative reputation of the main domain can affect deliverability for everyone sharing it.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks explains that if you’re using the same parent domain you’re going to be sharing email reputation and you absolutely should not share sending domains at all because that’s going to break a lot of things.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that a compromised domain can lead to serious problems with deliverability and sender reputation. If you share sending domains, the actions of your partners directly impact your ability to reach your recipients' inboxes.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that sharing a sending domain with a partner exposes you to their sending practices. If they engage in spammy behavior, it negatively impacts your domain reputation and deliverability, potentially leading to blacklisting.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from Auth0 describes that the issue with using a shared domain as part of email deliverability is it opens the door to domain reputation issues from others, and that a custom domain should always be implemented.
Documentation from RFC outlines that domain name system security needs to be strictly monitored. Any partner who damages this can damage your own reputation and how the internet sees you.
Documentation from Microsoft outlines that sender reputation is influenced by domain reputation. Sharing a domain with a partner who engages in spammy behavior can severely damage your reputation, even if you follow best practices. It is crucial to monitor and control who shares your sending domain.
Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that sharing a domain with partners can dilute your sender reputation if their email practices are poor. This can lead to your emails being marked as spam or blocked, even if your sending practices are excellent. Google's algorithms consider the overall reputation of the domain, not just individual senders.