Disclosure: I work at Skyfall Labs, an official Zoho Partner, so I have a commercial interest. The facts below are from Zoho's own help pages, linked at the end; advice is labelled as advice. Originally published on skyfallhq.net.
Teams often find that a mass email stops short, or that CRM emails land in spam, and conclude Zoho is unreliable. Zoho's help pages explain the daily limits and the domain authentication it expects. This post sets those out.
Mass email limits, per Zoho
Zoho's Email Limits page gives daily mass email limits per organization: Standard 250, Professional 500, Enterprise 1,000 and Ultimate 2,000. Autoresponders, active email schedulers, macros and mass emails all count toward that total. A day runs from midnight to 11:59 PM in the organization's time zone. Zoho says the limit can be raised to 10,000 per day per organization for an additional cost by contacting the sales address listed on the page.
One-to-one email limits
Individual email limits are separate and based on confirmed, active users. Per Zoho, free and trial editions allow 50 emails per confirmed user per day, with To and CC recipients both counting, and paid editions allow 300 per confirmed user per day, which can be shared across the organization. Zoho says mass emails and emails sent from the organization email address set up in Zoho CRM are sent from Zoho's servers.
Authenticating your sending domain
Zoho's help describes email authentication for sending from Zoho CRM with your own domain as involving three standards: domain verification, DKIM and SPF. It describes DKIM as verifying the authenticity of the sender and protecting the message from alteration in transit, and SPF as letting domain owners specify which servers may send on their behalf. After completing authentication in Zoho CRM, you add the automatically generated SPF and DKIM records at your domain manager.
DNS points Zoho's page raises
- Both records are TXT records; the values and the DKIM host name come from the SPF/DKIM Setup screen in your CRM account.
- If you already have an SPF record, Zoho says not to add a second one; edit the existing record to add the Zoho include.
- Zoho says multiple SPF records can break the check and may send emails to spam.
- The SPF include value depends on your Zoho region (for example US, EU, IN, AU, CN, JP); use the one on Zoho's page for your data centre.
- Some DNS providers append your domain automatically to record names; Zoho says to end the name with a dot to prevent it.
- Zoho's page does not state edition requirements or how long DNS changes take to take effect.
Pitfalls worth checking (practical advice)
This section is advice from experience, not vendor documentation.
- Count every source against the daily cap. Autoresponders and macros share it with mass emails, so a campaign can be cut short by other automation.
- Authenticate the domain before the first campaign, not after complaints about spam folders.
- Check your DNS for an existing SPF record before adding anything.
- Plan large sends around the cap, or check with Zoho whether a separate Zoho product suits very large volumes.
- Send test messages to several mailbox providers and read the results before a full send.
