Zoho Mail Setup Domain Verification and Mail Exchange MX Records in GoDaddy

Zoho email is a free means of sending email with your custom domain. For instance, your email will be you@yourdomain.com (rather than you@gmail.com). One key advantage of sending custom domain emails is that they appear more professional and engender more trust. This post applies only if you bought your custom domain from GoDaddy (and not directly from an ecommerce host like Shopify).

The process involves 2 main steps; 1) verifying your domain and 2) setting up mail exchange (MX) records. 

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Step 1 - Domain verification (CNAME Method)

When you sign up for a Zoho account, you will be directed to a 'Domain Setup' page like the one pictured below.  The table provides data that should be copied and pasted on the website of your domain provider (like GoDaddy, NameCheap, etc).

• Log into your domain provider. We will use GoDaddy in this example. 

• Log in to GoDaddy.com
• Go to the DNS Zone
• Select the domain (to which the Zoho email will be attached)
• Click 'Add Records' (as pictured below)

• A new popup dialog box will appear. As shown below, select 'CNAME'

• Paste the data from the table provided by Zoho (as shown above). The 'host' code that starts 'zb' is unique to your Zoho account. Consequently, do not copy and paste the codes pictured on the 2 demonstration photos here. 

• Click 'Finish'.

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Step 2 - Mail Exchange (MX) records

In this example, Zoho provides 3 Mail Exchange (MX) records. This number may vary. These records are not specific to any single account and can therefore be copied from this webpage or the Zoho website. You will need to add all of the Zoho MX records provided to your domain provider's site. (demonstrated below). 

As mentioned above, you will need to add all 3 of the Zoho MX records to your domain provider's site. Below is an illustration using GoDaddy.com. 

• Log in to GoDaddy.com
• Go to the DNS Zone
• Select the domain (to which the Zoho email will be attached)
• Click 'Add Records' (as pictured below)

• The pop up dialog box appears. Select 'Mx Mail Exchange' as the record type as shown below.

• As pictured below, paste the information for each Zoho MX record into the fields and click 'Add Another' for the 2nd record. Below shows the 1st of three Zoho MX records. The second will show mx2.zoho.com with the priority set as 20 (as shown in the list of records above). Continue in the same way for the 3rd record.

• Wait for the information to populate. It often takes 1 to 2 hours. However, it can take as long as 24 hours.

RELATED CONTENT

• Set up new Zoho aliases
• Set up new Zoho email addresses with your custom domain
• Add a New From Address in Zoho Mail
• Set up a custom domain email address with Zoho