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Email channel

Email is available on every plan and is the default channel for marketing journeys and broadcasts. Before sending, you need to connect an email provider and, for best deliverability, verify a custom sender domain.

Plan Email is available on every plan.

How email delivery works

Section titled “How email delivery works”

Caramel does not deliver email directly. You connect your own email provider, and Caramel routes outbound marketing messages through it. Your provider bills you for usage separately — Caramel does not charge per email sent.

Supported providers include SendGrid, Resend, Postmark, Mailchimp, and any SMTP-compatible service. The full provider list is shown in the connection dialog.

Connect an email provider

Section titled “Connect an email provider”
  1. Go to Settings → Messaging Channels.
  2. Under Email, click Add provider.
  3. Select your provider from the list.
  4. Enter the credentials your provider issued (API key, SMTP host/port, or similar).
  5. Click Save. The badge updates to Configured.

Once configured, Caramel uses this provider for all outbound marketing email for your account.

Set up a custom sender domain

Section titled “Set up a custom sender domain”

Sending from your own domain (for example, hello@yourbusiness.com instead of a shared address) improves deliverability and prevents spam-filter penalties.

Tip Complete domain verification before launching any journey. Messages sent from an unverified domain are more likely to land in spam.

Verify your domain

Section titled “Verify your domain”
  1. Go to Settings → Email and sender domain.
  2. Enter the domain you want to send from (for example, yourbusiness.com).
  3. Click Generate DNS records.
  4. The wizard shows the DNS records you need to add at your domain registrar. Add all required records (these authenticate your sending identity).
  5. Click Check records. Verification can take up to 48 hours, though it usually completes within minutes.
  6. When the status shows Verified, your domain is ready to use.

Optional: improve SPF alignment

Section titled “Optional: improve SPF alignment”

After your domain is verified, the wizard shows an optional set of DNS records that further align your envelope-from address with your domain. These are not required for sending, but they can improve Mail-Tester and inbox placement scores. Expand Improve deliverability to see these records.

Best practices

Section titled “Best practices”
  • Use a subdomain for marketing — send from marketing.yourbusiness.com rather than your root domain. This isolates your marketing sending reputation from transactional email.
  • Keep your list clean — remove hard bounces promptly. High bounce rates hurt your sender score across all recipients.
  • Honor unsubscribes — Caramel handles unsubscribe links automatically in every campaign. Do not suppress the unsubscribe footer.
  • Warm up a new domain — if you’re sending to a large list from a new domain, start with your most-engaged customers and increase volume over 2–4 weeks.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”