PandaDoc Emails Going to Spam? 5 Fixes Ranked by Leverage
Nothing derails a deal faster than a prospect asking, “did you actually send it?” when you know full well you sent it two days ago. If your PandaDoc emails are landing in spam, this is a solvable authentication and deliverability problem. Below is the diagnostic order and the five fixes ranked from highest leverage (fixes it for everyone) to lowest (fixes it for one recipient at a time).
Quick fix checklist
Before you dive into the deep guide, run these five checks in order:
- Confirm whether the problem is system-wide (every recipient) or isolated (one client’s mail server). This changes the whole fix path.
- Check whether PandaDoc is currently sending from
noreply@pandadoc.comor fromyou@yourcompany.com. If it’s the first, that is almost certainly the root cause. - Turn on the custom email domain feature in PandaDoc (Business and Enterprise plans) so emails send from your domain.
- Publish the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records PandaDoc gives you into your domain’s DNS.
- Warm up the new sending domain for two weeks before blasting a full pipeline through it.
Is the spam problem system-wide or a single recipient?
Answer directly: before changing anything, find out whether every recipient sees your PandaDoc emails in spam or just one. System-wide means a sender-side authentication or reputation issue you can fix. Single-recipient means a filter or allowlist issue on the recipient’s mail server that needs a targeted workaround.
Here is the fastest way to tell them apart. Send a document to three test addresses you control: a Google Workspace inbox, a Microsoft 365 inbox, and a personal Gmail. If all three land in spam, you have a sender-side authentication problem, keep reading. If two out of three land in the inbox and one lands in spam, the problem is almost certainly recipient-side filtering at that client’s company, and the fix is allowlisting on their end.
Also ask your sales team a simple question: is this happening to new prospects, existing clients, or both? If it started happening suddenly to existing clients who used to receive documents fine, something changed on your sender reputation, either your domain got flagged, PandaDoc’s shared sending IP got flagged, or you recently switched from a custom domain back to PandaDoc’s default. If it has always been happening, you never had proper authentication set up in the first place.
Why do PandaDoc emails end up in spam in the first place?
Answer directly: by default, PandaDoc sends notification emails from its own sending domain, not yours. That means the “from” address the recipient sees may say your name, but the actual authenticated sender is PandaDoc. Modern mail filters flag that mismatch as a phishing pattern and route the message to spam.
Every business email that gets to the inbox reliably has three things aligned: SPF (the receiving server can verify the sending server is allowed to send for that domain), DKIM (the message is cryptographically signed by the sending domain), and DMARC (the domain owner publishes a policy telling receivers what to do when SPF or DKIM fails). When all three pass and align with the visible “from” address, mail filters trust the message. When any of them is misaligned, especially in a way that suggests one company is sending “as” another, filters treat the message as suspicious.
PandaDoc’s default sending setup handles SPF and DKIM for its own domain, which is why the emails technically pass authentication. The problem is that they pass authentication for pandadoc.com, not for yourcompany.com. Recipients’ mail servers see an email that claims to be from your sales rep but is actually authenticated by PandaDoc, and increasingly they route that mismatch straight to spam.
There is a second driver worth knowing: PandaDoc’s default sending infrastructure is shared across thousands of customers. If a handful of those customers are sending aggressive outbound sequences, the shared IP reputation dips, and everyone using the default sending pool feels it.
What is a custom email domain in PandaDoc, and does turning it on fix this?
Answer directly: PandaDoc’s custom email domain feature lets outbound document notifications send from your own domain instead of PandaDoc’s. This is available on Business and Enterprise plans. Turning it on and configuring DNS correctly is the highest-leverage fix and typically resolves the spam problem for every recipient at once.
Once you enable the custom email domain in your PandaDoc account settings, PandaDoc gives you a set of DNS records to publish at your domain registrar (or wherever your DNS is hosted). You add these records, wait for propagation, and verify inside PandaDoc that everything shows as active. From that point on, document notifications go out as sales@yourcompany.com (or whichever subdomain you configured), and the authentication records match the visible sender. Filters trust it.
This is where teams get stuck: enabling the toggle without publishing the DNS records does not just fail silently, it can actively hurt deliverability. If PandaDoc starts signing emails “as” your domain but your DNS does not confirm it is allowed to, receivers may flag the message harder than before. Enable the feature and publish the records in the same sitting, then wait for verification before switching document sends over.
If you are on the Essentials plan, this feature is not available and no amount of DNS work will fix it. You either upgrade or you live with the shared sending reputation.
What SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records does PandaDoc need me to add?
Answer directly: PandaDoc will give you the exact record values inside your account after you enable the custom email domain. Generally you will add one SPF record (a TXT record listing PandaDoc’s sending servers as authorized), one or more DKIM records (as CNAMEs pointing to PandaDoc’s key infrastructure), and a DMARC record (a TXT record publishing your policy). Do not copy record values from a blog post, they are specific to your account.
The general shape of what you are doing: SPF lists which servers are allowed to send email for your domain, so you either add PandaDoc’s sending servers to your existing SPF record (as an include: entry) or create one if you do not have one. DKIM is a cryptographic signature. PandaDoc gives you CNAME records that point at key hosts they control, and mail receivers use those keys to verify each message’s signature. DMARC tells receiving servers what to do when a message claims to be from your domain but does not pass SPF or DKIM alignment. A safe starting DMARC policy is p=none (monitor only), moving to p=quarantine once you have confirmed nothing legitimate is failing.
One trap worth flagging: if you already have SPF records for Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, HubSpot, or another platform, do not create a second SPF record. You can only have one SPF record per domain, and having two silently breaks both. Merge the PandaDoc include: into the existing SPF record.
If this is the point where your eyes glaze over, that is normal, DNS is nobody’s favorite Tuesday. This is the part of setup we most often handle inside a PandaDoc onboarding engagement.
Do I need to warm up the new sending domain before I send at volume?
Answer directly: yes, if you are going from zero sending on that domain (or subdomain) to hundreds of documents a week, ramp up gradually over two weeks. Mail providers track sending patterns per domain, and a new domain that suddenly sends 500 emails on day one looks like a spam operation, not a legitimate business.
Warmup is not complicated. In week one, send low daily volumes (10 to 30 documents per day) to real recipients you know will open them. In week two, roughly double that daily. By week three you can operate at normal volume. Your existing sales pipeline is usually enough to do this organically, no dedicated warmup tool needed. The one thing to avoid: do not do a data-import blast of every open deal on day one just because you finally have custom domain working.
If your team sends genuinely high volume (thousands of documents a month) and you cannot ramp slowly because the pipeline demands otherwise, the answer is not “send more anyway.” It is a dedicated sending subdomain with its own reputation and infrastructure, which is the territory where Proposal Engine or a full outbound infrastructure setup starts making sense.
What content in the email or document itself can trigger spam filters?
Answer directly: spam filters score message content as well as authentication. Even a properly authenticated email can get filtered if the body, subject, or embedded content trips known spam heuristics. This is the second-highest leverage fix after custom domain setup, and it costs nothing.
Here are the most common content triggers, in rough order of how often they cause problems:
| Trigger | Why it hurts | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| ALL CAPS SUBJECT LINE | Classic spam pattern, high scoring weight | Sentence case, no shouting |
| Excessive exclamation marks | Same reason | One exclamation max, ideally none |
| All-image email body | Filters cannot read the content, treat as evasion | Include real body text alongside imagery |
| Broken image links or missing alt text | Signals sloppy or malicious sender | Fix image hosting, add alt text on all images |
| Too many links in a short body | Common phishing pattern | Reduce link count, keep to two or three |
| Link shorteners (bit.ly, tinyurl) | Hides destination, high suspicion score | Use full URLs on your own domain |
| Attachments named “invoice.pdf” or “payment.pdf” from cold contact | Impersonation pattern | Rename with context, or send as PandaDoc link instead |
| Words like “free,” “guarantee,” “act now,” in subject | Classic spam vocabulary | Sales-neutral subject lines |
| From-name and reply-to address that do not match | Impersonation flag | Align them |
| No unsubscribe or clear sender identification | CAN-SPAM and RFC violation | Include company address and rep signature |
The two biggest offenders on this list are all-image emails and screaming subject lines. If your PandaDoc templates use a full-image header with no supporting text, or if the notification subject is generated as “PROPOSAL FROM COMPANY NAME,” rework that. Notification subject lines can be customized in PandaDoc’s email settings. Template body content should be a real mix of text and images so filters can parse it.
This category is where your template design does quiet heavy lifting. A PandaDoc template design that is optimized for both prospect experience and email deliverability is a very different artifact from a template that just looks pretty in the editor.
How do I get a specific client to allowlist our PandaDoc emails?
Answer directly: if you have done all the sender-side fixes above and one specific enterprise client’s mail server is still filtering your PandaDoc emails to spam or quarantine, ask that client’s IT team to add your sending domain to their allowlist (sometimes called a safelist or approved sender list). This is common with Fortune 500 and regulated-industry clients whose IT policies are aggressive.
Give the client’s IT contact three pieces of information: the exact sending domain PandaDoc uses for your account (yours if you configured custom domain, PandaDoc’s if you have not), the specific “from” address the emails use, and the fact that these are contractual documents that need to reach the recipient’s inbox reliably. Most IT teams can add an exception in ten minutes. Some have a formal request process and take a week. If a client’s IT team refuses to allowlist and their filter keeps quarantining, the practical workaround is to have your rep tell the client to check spam whenever a document is expected, and to reply to the notification email (a reply from the recipient dramatically improves future inbox placement from that sender).
One thing that is not a fix: telling your rep to email the client separately saying, “watch for the PandaDoc email.” That does not change filter behavior, and it puts a friction step in front of every send.
Frequently asked questions
Does the PandaDoc mobile app send from a different domain than the web app?
No. Regardless of which client you send from, the outbound email uses the sending configuration on your PandaDoc account. If you have custom domain configured, both web and mobile sends go from your domain. If you have not, both go from PandaDoc’s default.
Will fixing this retroactively rescue documents already in a recipient’s spam folder?
Unfortunately no. Emails already delivered stay wherever they landed. The fix improves future sends. If a critical document is currently in a client’s spam folder, ask them to mark it “not spam” and reply to it, which helps future messages from that sender, and resend a fresh copy once the fixes are in.
Can I use my Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 SPF setup to authenticate PandaDoc sends?
Partially. Your existing SPF record is the right place to add PandaDoc’s sending servers as an authorized include:, so in that sense you are combining setups. But DKIM signing has to be configured specifically for PandaDoc, and it does not piggyback on your Google or Microsoft DKIM. You add PandaDoc’s DKIM records separately.
How long after publishing DNS records do the fixes take effect?
Most DNS records propagate within an hour and are fully live within 24 hours. PandaDoc’s verification check inside your account will confirm when the records are seen. Actual inbox deliverability improves within days as receiving servers see consistent authenticated sends. Full sender reputation recovery from a bad prior period can take two to four weeks.
If our whole industry has this problem with PandaDoc, does that mean the platform is broken?
No. Every email sending platform (PandaDoc, DocuSign, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp) has the same underlying problem: their default sending domain is shared and their custom-domain feature requires DNS work customers often skip. The platforms that “just work” for you are ones where somebody quietly did the DNS work at some point. PandaDoc’s authentication support is standard for the category and works reliably once configured.
Getting this fixed without touching DNS yourself
If DNS records, DMARC policies, and SPF merges are not how your team wants to spend a week, this is the single most common ticket we handle. We configure PandaDoc custom sending domain, publish the right authentication records at your registrar, verify inbox placement across Google, Microsoft, and personal mail providers, and warm up the new domain to your normal sending volume, without your sales team’s pipeline missing a beat.
Get PandaDoc setup and rescue help and we will diagnose whether this is a five-minute config fix or a full sending infrastructure rebuild, then handle whichever it turns out to be.