Documentation

Overview

BestWebby runs your storefront on your own domain and sends your customer email from that same domain. Two things get set up:

• The storefront — your shop served at yourdomain.com over HTTPS, with the certificate issued and renewed for you via Let's Encrypt.
• Branded email — a [email protected] mailbox that your store's notifications send from, cryptographically signed (DKIM) by your domain so those messages land in the inbox instead of the spam folder.

Both are driven by DNS records you publish at your registrar or DNS provider. You add the domain, prove you own it with one DNS record, point the domain at our server with another, and the rest is provisioned for you. You stay in control: nothing goes live until you have published the records, and you can see the exact records to add at every step.

You need the owner role to add or verify a domain — adding a domain provisions infrastructure, so it lives under shop settings.

Step 1: Add your domain

1. Go to Settings → Domains and click Add domain.
2. Enter your domain (for example yourdomain.com) and a name for the site.
3. Save.

The domain is created in an unverified, inactive state. BestWebby generates a one-time ownership token and shows you two DNS records to publish:

The TXT record proves you own the domain. The A record points the domain at our server so we can serve your storefront and issue the SSL certificate.

Step 2: Publish the DNS records

Log in to your DNS provider (Cloudflare, your registrar, or wherever your domain's DNS lives) and add both records exactly as shown.

Tips:

• Copy the token exactly. A verify check that finds the record but sees the wrong value will tell you it didn't match — usually a stray space or a partial paste.
• If your provider auto-appends the domain to the host, enter just _bestwebby-verify for the TXT host rather than the full _bestwebby-verify.yourdomain.com.
• DNS changes are not instant. Give them a few minutes to propagate before verifying.

Step 3: Verify and go live

Back in Settings → Domains, click Verify on the domain.

BestWebby looks up the _bestwebby-verify TXT record and confirms it matches your token. When it does:

1. The domain is marked verified.
2. Provisioning starts: a web server configuration is created for your domain, and a Let's Encrypt certificate is issued.
3. Once the certificate is live, your store flips active and is reachable over HTTPS at your domain.

Certificate issuance only starts once your domain's A record actually points at our server. If the A record hasn't propagated yet, the domain waits in a dns_pending state and is picked up automatically once it resolves — you don't need to keep clicking.

If a provisioning attempt fails, a Retry button appears. Retry re-runs the setup; it does not re-check ownership (that's already proven).

A note on rate limits

Certificate issuance is subject to Let's Encrypt's limits (a capped number of failed validation attempts per hostname per hour). BestWebby only attempts issuance when your domain resolves to our server, and it throttles retries per domain, so a mis-pointed domain doesn't burn through your attempts. If you hit a wall, wait out the cooldown and retry rather than clicking repeatedly.

Step 4: Branded email is provisioned for you

When your domain is verified, BestWebby also provisions email hosting for it on the shared mail server. This is what lets your store send from [email protected] instead of a generic platform address. It sets up:

• A DKIM key for your domain.
• A [email protected] mailbox that the platform uses to send your store's notifications.
• The MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records you need to publish.

This runs in the background and usually takes a few minutes. In Settings → Email, you'll see a "Setting up your mailboxes…" message until it's active.

Publish your email DNS records

Once mail hosting is active, Settings → Email shows the exact records for your domain. Publish all four at your DNS provider:

Until these are published, your store email falls back to sending from the platform address, so nothing breaks while you finish setup. Once they're live, mail from your domain is DKIM-signed and sends from [email protected].

Extra mailboxes

Beyond the automatic support@ mailbox, you can create additional mailboxes on any domain whose email hosting is active — for example [email protected] or [email protected].

1. Go to Settings → Email and click New Email.
2. Enter the username, pick the domain, and create.
3. Copy the password immediately — it is shown once and is not stored, so it can't be recovered later. If you lose it, delete the mailbox and create it again.

The number of mailboxes you can create depends on your plan.

Connecting a mail client

Extra mailboxes are POP3 mailboxes. Configure your email client with:

• Incoming (POP3): mail.bestwebby.com, port 995, SSL/TLS
• Outgoing (SMTP): mail.bestwebby.com, port 587, STARTTLS
• Username: the full email address (e.g. [email protected])
• Password: the one shown when you created the mailbox

IMAP is not available — use POP3.

Important: 48-hour retention

Mail is automatically deleted from the server 48 hours after it arrives. The server is a relay, not long-term storage. To keep your messages:

• Connect a POP3 client and keep it running so it downloads new mail regularly.
• Leave "delete from server after download" enabled so your client, not the server, becomes the permanent home for your mail.

If you don't connect a client, or leave it off for more than two days, mail older than 48 hours will be gone.

Gotchas and troubleshooting

• "TXT record found but value does not match." You published the record, but the value is off. Re-copy the token and check for trailing spaces or a truncated paste.
• "Could not read TXT record." DNS hasn't propagated yet. Wait a few minutes and verify again.
• Store verified but not live. The certificate is still issuing, or your A record isn't pointing at us yet. A domain in dns_pending resolves itself once the A record propagates.
• Can't create extra mailboxes. The domain's email hosting must be active first. If it still says "Setting up…", give it a few minutes; if it says setup failed, contact support.
• Store email still comes from the platform address. Either mail hosting isn't active yet, or your MX/SPF/DKIM/DMARC records aren't published. Add them and allow time to propagate.

Where to go next

• Settings → Domains — add, verify, and monitor domains and SSL status.
• Settings → Email — view your per-domain DNS records, create extra mailboxes, and check mail hosting status.

Questions? Contact [email protected].