Is Spaceship your DNS host?
If you bought the domain at Spaceship and have not changed its nameservers, yes: they read launch1.spaceship.net and launch2.spaceship.net, shown under Nameservers on the domain's Advanced DNS page. If they have been set to custom nameservers — another company's, such as ns.cloudflare.com — Spaceship moves every record into an Inactive records section, where it does nothing, and that host's guide is the one to follow.
Where the records go
- Sign in at spaceship.com and open Advanced DNS.
- Choose the domain. Its DNS records are listed, with yours under Custom records.
- Press Add record, choose the type, fill in the fields and press Add.
What Spaceship calls each field
| On imado | On Spaceship | What to put |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Type | Choose it after pressing Add record: TXT, CNAME or MX. |
| Host | Host | Only the part before your domain — Spaceship adds .example.com itself. For the MX record it is @, which means the domain itself. |
| Value | Value | Exactly as shown, copied with the button, without quotes. |
| Priority | Priority | On the MX record. 10. |
| — | TTL | Leave the default Spaceship offers. |
What to put for the domain itself
One record — the MX record, the one that makes mail arrive — belongs to the domain itself rather than to anything in front of it. Every DNS panel has its own way of saying that, and instructions written for a different one are the usual reason a correct-looking MX record receives nothing.
On Spaceship, type @. Spaceship's own guides write the bare domain as @. A guide written for a panel that wants the field left blank will tell you to leave it empty; on Spaceship, fill it in with @.
Do not type the domain in full. Spaceship appends your domain to the host, so the answer it wants is the short one.
The other five records all have something in front of the domain — _imado-challenge, _dmarc, the three _domainkey names — and those go in Host exactly as shown, with no domain after them.
Add the six records
First the ownership record; then, once imado shows it as Added, the other five. Each is Add record, the fields, and Add.
| Type | Host | Value | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| TXT | _imado-challenge | imado-verification=… | — |
| CNAME | …._domainkey | ….dkim.amazonses.com | — |
| CNAME | …._domainkey | ….dkim.amazonses.com | — |
| CNAME | …._domainkey | ….dkim.amazonses.com | — |
| MX | @ | inbound-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com | 10 |
| TXT | _dmarc | v=DMARC1; p=none; | — |
What gets in the way
- Spacemail. If Spaceship's own mail, Spacemail, is connected to this domain, Spaceship added its MX records for you —
mx1.spacemail.comandmx2.spacemail.comat priority 0. A lower number wins, so they outrank imado's at 10, and mail keeps going to Spacemail however right imado's record is. Disconnect Spacemail from the domain and delete both records before adding imado's. The same addresses can be created on imado. - Email forwarding. Spaceship's Email Forwarding, under Domain Manager, receives mail for the domain to pass it on. Turn it off for this domain, and delete any MX record it leaves behind.
- Inactive records. Records listed under Inactive records are not published. If imado's records land there, the domain is on custom nameservers, and the records belong at whoever those name.
- A conflict warning. Spaceship checks a new record against the ones already there and warns about a clash — most often a second MX record. Read which record it names: the answer is usually to delete the old one, not to override the warning.
Then, on imado
Back on your domain's page, press Check again. A new record is usually seen within minutes of being saved. When the ownership record is Added, the other records appear; when those are, create the mailbox and send yourself a message — steps 5 and 6 of the setup.
Spaceship's own guides cover adding DNS records and custom nameservers.
