How to set up DKIM on GoDaddy

Setting up DKIM on GoDaddy comes down to two moves: get the selector and the public key from whoever runs your mailboxes, then publish that key as a DNS record wherever your domain’s DNS is answered. The record comes first on this page because a person who can read one can tell a good paste from a broken one.

GoDaddy is the DNS host that publishes the DKIM record once it exists. It does not generate DKIM keys unless GoDaddy is also the mail provider; the email platform mints the key and hands over the records to publish.

What DKIM proves, and where the key has to live

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) puts a signature on each message sent from your domain. The mail platform signs with a private key it keeps to itself. The receiving server pulls the selector out of the DKIM-Signature header, looks up <selector>._domainkey.yourdomain.com in DNS, and checks the signature against the public key it finds there. A match tells the receiver two things: the message came from a system holding your private key, and nobody changed the body or the signed headers on the way.

That lookup is why the record goes where your DNS lives. Receivers don’t ask your mail platform for the key, and they don’t ask your registrar unless it happens to run the zone. They ask whichever nameservers your domain delegates to, and only the copy held there counts. The DKIM guide covers the check from the receiver’s side; this page covers the publishing side.

Two parties share the record and neither can do the other’s part. The mail platform generates the key pair inside its own console, keeps the private half, signs outgoing mail with it, and hands you the public half plus a selector. The DNS host publishes what you paste and has no way to invent a value that would verify.

GoDaddy publishes exactly the record the reader enters and nothing more. It does not generate the DKIM key, does not know how many records a given mail platform requires, and does not check whether the record it just saved matches what the provider is expecting.

The record, tag by tag

Most platforms hand you a TXT record. Its value is a short run of tags separated by semicolons, and a typical one begins v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p= followed by the key. v=DKIM1 names the version and, when present, has to come first. k=rsa names the key type; k=ed25519 exists, and a platform that supports it will say so. p= carries the public key itself, hundreds of characters of base64 with no spaces, and it’s the one tag a receiver insists on.

Three optional tags matter. t=y marks the key as testing, so receivers treat a failed signature as if the message carried none. t=s says the identity in the signature has to be your domain itself, with no subdomain in front of it. h=sha256 limits the hash to the algorithm receivers use anyway.

Start with the value as your platform issued it, character for character, and don’t tidy it. Once mail is flowing, tighten in two places. If t=y is present, remove it so a failure counts as a failure. If the platform offers a 2048-bit key alongside a 1024-bit one, pick 2048, since it’s the length platforms now issue by default and receivers accept it.

Rotation stays the platform’s job: when it issues a new key under a new selector, you publish the new record and leave the old one up until nothing signs with it any more.

Some platforms give you a CNAME instead. The name is still <selector>._domainkey, and the target is a host on the platform’s own servers that holds the TXT value, which lets the platform rotate keys without you touching DNS again. If you were given a CNAME, publish a CNAME. Converting the target into a TXT record publishes a hostname where receivers expect a key.

The selector is the half people underrate. A receiver builds its lookup from the s= tag in the header, so the name you publish has to match the one the platform signs with, letter for letter. selector1 and selector2 are different keys, and so are mail and mail1. For DMARC alignment the d= in the signature also has to be your domain or a subdomain of it.

Confirm who answers DNS for your domain

A record saved in a console that your domain doesn’t delegate to is invisible to receivers, whatever that console reports.

A DKIM record only takes effect if the domain’s nameservers point at GoDaddy. In the GoDaddy account, open the domain and check the Nameservers section. If it shows another company’s nameservers, such as a web host, Cloudflare or the email provider itself, the DKIM records belong there instead, and adding them at GoDaddy does nothing.

Add the record in GoDaddy

Copy both pieces from the platform’s DKIM or email authentication page and keep that tab open until the check at the end passes. Laid out the way GoDaddy expects it, the record looks like this:

selector1._domainkey
selector2._domainkey
google._domainkey
selector1-yourdomain-com._domainkey.yourtenant.onmicrosoft.com
v=DKIM1; ...

The Name field, also shown as Host, takes only the selector part the provider supplied, such as selector1._domainkey, selector2._domainkey or google._domainkey, because GoDaddy appends the domain itself. The Value field takes the target hostname the provider gave for a CNAME record, or the full key string starting v=DKIM1; for a TXT record, pasted without surrounding quotes since GoDaddy handles the quoting. The Type field must match whatever the provider specified, usually CNAME, sometimes TXT, and TTL stays at its default.

Sign in to GoDaddy and open the domain’s DNS settings, labelled DNS, Manage DNS, or DNS / Records.
Select Add or Add New Record to start a new entry.
Choose the record type the email provider specified, usually CNAME, sometimes TXT.
In the Name field, also labelled Host, enter only the selector part exactly as the provider gave it, such as selector1._domainkey or google._domainkey.
Do not add the domain on the end of the Name field, because GoDaddy appends the domain automatically.
In the Value field, paste the target the provider gave: a target hostname for a CNAME record, or the full key string for a TXT record.
Leave the TTL field at its default setting.
Save the record, then repeat the same steps for every DKIM record the provider listed.
Return to the email provider’s own console and use its verify or enable DKIM control to confirm it can see the published records.

Before you save, compare the last few characters of the pasted value with the platform’s page, because a copy that stops early publishes a key that will never verify, and the console won’t warn you. Check the selector in the name against the platform’s page in the same pass.

A few traps are specific to GoDaddy:

Typing the selector followed by the domain in the Name field, such as selector1._domainkey.yourdomain.com, creates a doubled-up host name because GoDaddy appends the domain on its own.
Choosing the wrong record type, CNAME instead of TXT or the reverse, fails silently rather than showing an error.
Wrapping a TXT value in quotation marks breaks it; GoDaddy applies its own quoting to the plain string.
Publishing only one of two records that Microsoft 365 supplies leaves DKIM unverified, since Microsoft 365 checks for both selector1 and selector2 before it passes.
Saving the record in GoDaddy is not the last step; DKIM stays inactive until the email provider’s own verify or enable control confirms it can see the published records.

Save, then wait, then check

A saved record can take from minutes up to a couple of hours to spread once it is added in GoDaddy’s DNS settings, where it then appears alongside the domain’s other DNS records.

Once the record shows in the console, run the free scan against your domain. It asks DNS for the selector the way a receiving server does and tells you in plain words whether the key is published and readable.

A second check closes the loop. Send a message from the domain to a mailbox you control and open the Authentication-Results header. dkim=pass with your domain in header.d= means the signature verified against the key you published. dkim=fail or dkim=none with the record in place points at the selector or at the platform side, and the next section says where to look.

When the key is missing or malformed

Without a record at the selector, the receiver gets no key and the message carries no verified signature. It won’t bounce on that alone, though DMARC then has only SPF to lean on, and SPF breaks on forwarding, so the quote a customer forwards to a colleague arrives with neither.

A malformed record fails in the same quiet way: a p= value cut short, a stray space or line break in the middle, a doubled host such as mail._domainkey.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com, or a selector that’s off by one character, and the receiver logs dkim=fail or dkim=permerror and moves on. You hear nothing unless DMARC reports are arriving, and the DMARC piece shows how those reports expose a DKIM failure per sending source.

The census shows how ordinary that silence is. Of the 75,823,110 domains where the September 2026 census could run the DKIM check, it found a key at a known selector on 37,999,462 (50.1%). That check works the way any checker does: there’s no way to list the DKIM records on a domain, so it can only ask for selectors it knows to try, and a platform with an unusual selector can read as absent when the key is fine.

If your scan reports nothing found while the record sits in the console, finding your DKIM selector shows how to read the live selector out of a sent message’s headers before you change anything.

Work a failure in order: the selector spelling first, the nameservers second, then the tail of the pasted value, then whether the platform still needs you to switch signing on.

Figures as of 5 September 2026, from the September 2026 edition of the defaults.exposed census. Census numbers move every month; the current values are on the census data page.