A bounce domain will enable you to set an email address to which bounce information will be sent. Having a separate bounce domain will help with establishing a positive reputation with your recipient servers.

There are various names for a bounce domain that you might encounter which are used interchangeably in the industry, like:

By default, your Elastic Email account's bounce domain points to bounces.elasticemail.net

In order to set up your own custom bounce domain, log into your account, click on your profile name in the upper right corner and select

Settings>Domains>Manage Domains:
​https://app.elasticemail.com/marketing/settings/new/domains/

Afterwards click the three-dot menu besides your domain and select "View details"

You will be able to set up your custom bounce domain at the bottom of the screen:

By default the Use default bounce domain option is selected, which will set bounces.elasticemail.net as your bounce domain.

Another option is to Turn off bounce domain. This will not set any bounce domain and uses your Mail From address as the bounce address instead.

In order to set up custom bounce domain:

1) Select the Custom option, type in the domain name and click Continue.

2) Log in to your DNS zone

3) Input the required CNAME record, get back to your Elastic Email domains screen and click "Verify"

A bounce domain has to be a subdomain. We strongly recommend using a name such as bounces.yourdomain.com - using a bounces.(...) prefix for the bounce address is the most common practice in the email marketing industry.

When your custom bounce domain is set, click the "Continue" button. This will take you to one last pop up with information about a CNAME record you will have to set on your domain's DNS settings before finishing the process - this record will have to point to the bounce domain you have just set up in order to work correctly:

Type: CNAME

​Host name: bounces(or bounces.yourdomain.com)
​Value: bounces.elasticemail.net

When the appropriate CNAME record is set up on your domain's DNS settings, get back to the Bounce Domain Settings screen and click the blue "Verify Record" button at the bottom.

If you are using Cloudflare as your host, you need to disable it for that particular record by clicking the "cloud" icon.

When you get back to the previous screen - domain details, the Bounce domain part will now be checked with a green tick and will give you the optional ability to share the bounce domain with all the domains that are verified on your account. If any of your other domains do not have a custom bounce domain provided, they will use this domain instead.

Note: the "Bounce domain" checkbox on the domains screen will be checked only if you select the "Use custom bounce domain" option. It will remain grayed out when "Use default bounce domain" or "Use your domain name (turn off bounce domain)" are selected.

When you successfully set up and use your custom bounce domain, there might be instances where Google might rank your SPF record as "Neutral". This means that Google.com hosting is neither permitted nor denied by your custom bounce domain - this should not affect your deliverability. However, if you'd still like to get rid of this soft warning, one simple step might help you.

Just add an Elastic Email SPF record to your custom bounce domain, just as you would do with your regular sender domain.