Email configuration incomplete
`your domain` is missing the value of the records that make its email trustworthy: older TLS versions.
28% · n=32 · as of 15 September 2026 of sites ShipReady scanned had this, counted across sites where this check completed.
Why it matters
`your domain` is missing the value of the records that make its email trustworthy: older TLS versions. Together these are one job, not several — until they are all in place, anyone can send mail that appears to come from your domain, and receiving servers have no way to tell your real transactional email from a forgery. That matters most for the mail your product sends automatically. Password resets, receipts and support replies are exactly what a phishing campaign imitates, and an unprotected domain is the easiest thing in the world to imitate. Unauthenticated mail is also far more likely to land in spam, so the cost is paid twice: your genuine email is trusted less, and a forgery of it is trusted more. These have to be done in order. SPF and DKIM establish that your mail is genuine; DMARC only tells receivers what to do about mail that fails those checks. Publishing DMARC enforcement first — before SPF and DKIM are aligned — makes receivers start discarding your own mail.
How ShipReady detects it
Email-authentication DNS records (DMARC / SPF). Almost every AI-built SaaS sends transactional email — password resets, magic links, receipts — through Resend, SendGrid or Postmark. Setting that up gets the mail delivered; it does not stop anyone else sending mail that claims to come from the same domain. Without a DMARC policy, a receiving server has no instruction to reject a forgery, so an attacker can send "reset your password" from the product's own domain and the message will land in the inbox looking authentic. This check is almost entirely DNS rather than HTTP — one exception is MTA-STS, whose policy is only half-published in DNS; the other half is a file fetched over HTTPS (see _check_mta_sts). Nearly everything else here is the most deterministic kind of check the scanner has: a record either exists or it does not, so there is no heuristic and no false-positive surface. The one place judgement is required is deciding WHICH domain to ask about — see _organizational_domain.
Detection is deterministic. ShipReady reports this only when it observes the condition directly, and prefers to miss a real problem over inventing one. Rule version 1.10.0.
How to fix it
This is the prompt ShipReady puts in your report — written to be pasted straight into Cursor, Claude Code, or whichever assistant built the app.
The domain your domain is missing author or publication date. Do them in this order — the order matters more than any single record, because publishing DMARC enforcement before SPF and DKIM are aligned makes receivers start discarding your own mail. 1. SPF. Add ONE TXT record at your domain listing every service that sends mail as you: "v=spf1 include:<your-provider> ~all". Include your transactional provider, your mailbox host and any marketing tool. Exactly one SPF record — two is a permanent error that fails all of them — and end with ~all, never +all. 2. DKIM. Enable DKIM signing in your mail provider's dashboard, then publish the selector record it generates (a TXT record at <selector>._domainkey.your domain). The key is generated per-account, so copy it from the provider rather than writing one. If your DNS is hosted somewhere other than your mail provider, this is a manual copy step that is easy to skip. 3. MX, if you want to receive mail at this domain. Without it, replies to your transactional email bounce, bounce notifications are lost, and DMARC aggregate reports have nowhere to be delivered. 4. DMARC, last. Start at "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@your domain" — reporting only, no delivery impact. Read the aggregate reports for two to four weeks until every legitimate sender passes SPF or DKIM alignment, then raise to p=quarantine and finally p=reject. Do not start at p=reject. Verify each record resolves before moving to the next; a typo in SPF is silent until mail starts failing.
Frequently asked questions
- What does "Email configuration incomplete" mean?
- `your domain` is missing the value of the records that make its email trustworthy: older TLS versions.
- How serious is it?
- ShipReady rates this medium. Fix soon. Meaningfully weakens a defence or degrades how the site works.
- How common is this?
- Across the sites ShipReady has scanned where this check completed, 28% · n=32 · as of 15 September 2026.
- How do I fix it?
- Paste the fix prompt on this page into Cursor, Claude Code or your AI editor. It is the same prompt ShipReady puts in your report.
- Can I check my own site?
- Yes — ShipReady scans up to ten pages of any public site for free and reports this alongside every other check. The free report lists every issue it finds and shows full evidence and a fix prompt for the critical and high-severity ones; medium and low findings are counted and unlock on Pro.
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