Pointing an IONOS domain at your newsletter

IONOS keeps DNS behind Domains and SSL rather than in a menu of its own, and its field names differ from most providers: Host name is what Issue Mint calls Host, and Points to is what Issue Mint calls Value. The records themselves are the same set every provider gets.

None of this is needed to start. A newsletter publishes and sends from the day you sign up, on its {slug}.issuemint.com address, and adding a domain moves the website and the sending onto yours.

Finding the DNS screen at IONOS

IONOS puts DNS on the domain, one level in from the domain list. Sign in, open Domains and SSL from the menu, click the domain you are using, then open its DNS tab. Add record shows a list of record types, and choosing one narrows the form to the fields that type needs.

The list on that screen is everything the domain currently publishes, including records IONOS added for its own services. Leave those alone unless one of them holds a hostname you are about to point at Issue Mint, in which case remove the old row rather than adding a second record on the same host.

What IONOS calls each field

IONOS asks for Type, Host name, Points to and TTL. Points to is the target of a CNAME or an MX record, a TXT record’s box is labelled Value instead, and TTL is a dropdown rather than a number you type.

IONOS completes the domain for you, so Host name takes the prefix on its own: www, go, send, _dmarc, _acme-challenge.www. For a record on the domain itself, @ and an empty Host name mean the same thing. The MX record is the only row with a priority, and IONOS gives that its own box.

The records to add

Seven records exist the moment you add the domain.

Copy the values from Settings, then Domain and DNS, rather than from this page. The three _acme-challenge records carry an identifier unique to your account, so no documentation page can print them, and every value in the domain tab has a copy button beside it. The two website records are what put your archive and signup pages on your own domain, and what each record is for covers the rest, including which ones are optional.

If the record on the root will not go in

Some providers cannot put a CNAME on the root of a domain, and where IONOS refuses that record, or accepts it and it never verifies while www does, the www address is the answer rather than a workaround.

A CNAME may not sit at the root of a zone beside its NS and SOA records, so supporting the root at all means the provider resolving the target and answering with addresses instead. Where that is not on offer, Issue Mint notices the pattern, www verified and the apex not, and offers www.yourdomain.com as your address in one click. It is reversible, and the apex records stay in the table and keep being checked. Choosing between the bare domain and www covers what changes when you take it.

Your IONOS mailboxes are not affected

The only MX record Issue Mint asks for sits on send, which is a subdomain, so mail addressed to your domain itself carries on exactly as before. An IONOS mailbox, or Microsoft 365 on the same domain, needs nothing changed and its MX records on the root should be left alone.

That send record exists so bounce notifications go back to Amazon rather than to your own mail host, which is how Issue Mint takes dead addresses off your list without you having to read the bounces yourself.

The sending records, which arrive later

Five more records appear once Amazon has handed back your DKIM tokens, which happens on its own shortly after the domain is added.

Each DKIM host is a long token followed by ._domainkey, and IONOS appends the domain, so Host name takes the token and ._domainkey and nothing else. Use the copy button rather than reading the token off the screen, because these are long enough that copying them by hand goes wrong. Until all three verify, issues go out from our address; after they do, they come from yours, which is what sending from your own domain means in practice.

After you save

IONOS usually publishes a change within a few minutes, though it can take longer. Issue Mint checks a newly added domain every ten minutes for its first two days and hourly after that, and Verify now forces a check immediately.

Certificates issue on their own once the _acme-challenge records resolve, and the HTTPS card on the domain tab tracks each hostname separately from the record’s own state. If a record you are sure about will not verify, the order to check things in starts with the cause that turns out to be the real one most often.