Magic link email not arriving — sender domain checklist
Missing magic link emails usually trace to an unverified sender domain, a mailbox-provider filter, or the sign-in cooldown; here is the checklist.
Magic link emails failing to arrive almost always trace back to one of three root causes: your custom sender domain (Business and Agency plans) is not verified, its DNS records for SPF/DKIM are missing or still propagating, or the reader's email provider is filtering the message. Here's how to diagnose and fix each.
Check 1 — Is your sender domain verified?
If you send from your own domain, open Admin → Newsletter → Sender Domain. The status should be Verified. If it shows Pending DNS or Failed, the DNS records have either not propagated yet or are incorrect. Three records are required — DKIM, SPF, and DMARC — and all three must be present and error-free. On the Pro plan, magic links come from the VeloCMS platform address and there is no sender domain to verify, so skip to Check 2.
# Records required for a custom sender domain (copy the exact values the panel shows):
# DKIM: the record name and value from the Sender Domain panel
# SPF: the TXT record from the panel, merged into any existing SPF record
# DMARC (TXT on _dmarc):
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]Check 2 — Test with a different email address
Send a magic link to a Gmail address and to an Outlook/Hotmail address. If both fail, the issue is the sending setup (sender domain verification). If Gmail works but Outlook fails, the issue is reputation-based (Microsoft's filters are stricter). If neither works, use Admin → Settings → Email → Test Send to confirm that sending works at all, then contact support with the reader's address and the time of the request.
Check 3 — Does the from address match the verified domain?
VeloCMS sends member magic links from the sender you set up under Admin → Newsletter → Sender Domain. The domain of that address (the part after @) must match the domain you verified there. If the sender is [email protected], then yourblog.com must be the verified sender domain. A mismatch — even by a subdomain — means the message isn't authenticated by your DKIM and SPF records, and mailbox providers are far more likely to filter it.
Test Send shows whether VeloCMS can send a message to your own inbox. If the test arrives but a reader's message doesn't, the difference is on the reader's mail server: ask them to check their spam folder and add your sender address to their contacts.
Check 4 — Rate limiting and cooldown periods
VeloCMS rate-limits sign-in link requests to 5 per minute per email address (and 10 per minute per IP address) to prevent abuse. Past that, the login form shows 'Too many login requests for this email. Try again in Ns.' and no email is sent until the minute has passed. Also remember that a magic link is only valid for 15 minutes, so a link that arrived late may already have expired: ask the reader to request a fresh one. If the issue persists after the cooldown, it's not rate limiting — go back to Check 1.