Which domains a team can claim

A team can claim a domain that belongs to a company, such as fabrikam.com. It cannot claim public mail domains such as gmail.com or outlook.com, because those are shared by millions of people who have nothing to do with the team. A domain can also be held by only one team at a time.

This page lists what is refused and why. How claiming works, and what happens to the people at a claimed domain, is in How people with your company email join your team.

Public mail cannot be claimed

If you try, you see "Public email domains like gmail.com can't be claimed." The block covers:

• A fixed list of well-known free and personal mail services, internet providers, and address-relay or alias services, where one domain is shared by every customer. It includes Gmail, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live, Yahoo, AOL, Proton, GMX, Zoho, Yandex and many regional providers.
• Country variants. The big free-mail brands have far too many country versions to list, so a pattern catches them. A domain is refused when it is one of those brand names, then optionally com, co, net or org, then a two-letter country code. Hotmail.com.br, live.nl, yahoo.co.id and gmx.fr are examples. Names that merely begin with a brand, such as outlookgroup.de or livenation.com, are not caught.
• Subdomains of any of these. Something like team.gmail.com is public mail too.

The pattern looks at the domain and at each parent of it. If your company's real domain happens to be a brand name plus a country code from that list, it cannot be claimed.

Subdomains are separate domains

A subdomain such as sub.fabrikam.com is a different domain from fabrikam.com. Claiming one does not claim the other, and people with an address at fabrikam.com are not at sub.fabrikam.com. Claim each one you need. The same goes for the text you type: GetCalendario ignores capital letters, a leading "@", "https://" and "www.", so "@Fabrikam.COM" and "www.fabrikam.com" are the same claim. Anything that does not look like a domain is refused with "That doesn't look like a domain. Try something like fabrikam.com."

The 1,000-account limit on an email claim

When you claim a domain with your own email, GetCalendario counts the GetCalendario accounts with a verified address at that domain. Above 1,000 the claim is refused with "fabrikam.com has more than 1,000 GetCalendario accounts. Contact support and we'll set it up with you." Nothing is half-claimed. The limit is about inviting everyone at once. It is a setting in GetCalendario, not a price.

One team per domain

If another team already holds a domain, claiming it with your email is refused: "Another team already uses fabrikam.com. If it's yours, verify it with DNS to take it over."

DNS outranks email. A team that only claimed a domain by email loses it to a team that proves the domain with a DNS record. The team that lost it has its Owner emailed afterward, and the email says whether anyone moved. Everyone with a verified sign-in address at the domain, whichever team they were on, joins the team that proved it, apart from people who own a team, secondaries, and anyone whose access was removed.

DNS does not lose to DNS. If another team already verified the domain with DNS, you see "Another team verified fabrikam.com first." Adding a DNS record at a domain you control is the only way to take one from an email-only holder. A domain that has been proved by DNS cannot be taken from its holder by anyone else.

A DNS-verified domain is not checked again

Once the DNS check passes, the team keeps the domain. GetCalendario does not look at your DNS again later, so removing the record afterward does not undo the claim. The team gives up a domain only by removing it on the Domains tab, which turns the people at it into Sponsored members, as described in Team members: Owner, Admin, Managed and Sponsored.

What to know

• A domain waiting for its DNS record counts as nothing yet. It does not stop another team from claiming the domain by email.
• Who can claim: someone allowed to manage domains, normally the Owner or an Admin.
• Anyone with their own account can start a team from People & Team. Team prices are on the pricing page.