TL;DR
- If your agency uses a website platform like SourceFlow or Volcanic, your email signature images are most likely loading from that platform’s domain. Not yours.
- That creates a dependency: if you ever change website platforms, every signature image across your whole team breaks.
- The fix is to host those images on a subdomain you own, like images.yourcompany.co.uk, using a free tool from Cloudflare.
- Setup takes around 30 minutes and does not require a developer or any changes to your website.
Email Signature Image Issues
Here is something most recruitment agencies do not realise until something goes wrong: the images in your email signatures are often not coming from your own domain at all.
Your email says it is from yourcompany.co.uk. Your logo and signature banner look correct on screen. But behind each image, there is a URL, and that URL almost certainly points to a domain owned by your website platform, not you.
This is not a catastrophic problem. But it is a loose thread, and it is worth pulling.
Why This Happens
When your agency uses a website platform (SourceFlow and Volcanic are common ones in UK recruitment) any images you upload go into that platform’s own file storage. The platform serves those files from its own web addresses to make your website load quickly.
That is fine for your website. The problem is that when you copy an image URL out of your website’s media library and paste it into an email signature template, you are using that platform’s address, not yours. So the image in your signature is being served from cdn.sourceflow.co.uk or similar, even though every other part of your email comes from your own domain.
Most email recipients will never notice. But your marketing team will notice the day you move to a new website platform and every signature image across the agency stops loading at once.
Why It Actually Matters
There are three practical reasons to care about this.
Your signature images break when you change platforms. Every website platform hosts images on its own addresses. When you leave, those addresses go away. If your signature images live there, they break the moment your old site goes offline, often before anyone has thought to update the signatures.
Your marketing team cannot update signatures without going through the CMS. Want to swap in a campaign banner for a few weeks? Someone has to upload the new image to the website, get the new URL, and push that out to the signature template. More steps than it should be for what is essentially a standalone asset.
The image is coming from a domain your candidates and clients have never heard of. Your email says it is from you. The image loading in the background says otherwise. Most people will never see this, but it is a minor inconsistency that is easy to eliminate.
The Fix: Host Your Signature Images on Your Own Subdomain
The practical way to do this (without hiring a developer or paying for hosting) is to use a free tool from Cloudflare called R2. Most people in recruitment know Cloudflare as the security layer that sits in front of websites. What fewer people know is that Cloudflare also gives you a place to store and serve files, free of charge, on a web address of your choosing.
The solution is to move your signature images somewhere you control permanently, on a web address that belongs to your agency.
You connect a subdomain from your own domain (something like images.yourcompany.co.uk) to a folder Cloudflare manages for you. Your signature images live there. They load from your own address. If you move your website tomorrow, nothing changes.
What it costs
Worth stating clearly: for this use case, it costs nothing. Cloudflare’s free tier covers far more storage and traffic than a handful of signature images will ever use. A typical agency’s full set of email signature assets (logos, banners, the lot) might run to a couple of megabytes. The free tier covers gigabytes. This is not “free up to a point.” It is just free.
How to Set It Up
1. Add your domain to Cloudflare
If your domain’s DNS is not already managed through Cloudflare, you will need to add it. Create a free Cloudflare account, add your domain, enter all your existing DNS records (don’t miss any!) and update the nameservers at your domain registrar (wherever you bought the domain; GoDaddy, 123-reg, Namecheap, and so on) to point to Cloudflare. Your website keeps working exactly as before. You are just changing where your DNS settings live.
2. Create a storage folder (called a bucket)
Inside Cloudflare, go to R2 and create a new bucket. Think of it as a folder in the cloud. Name it something straightforward, agency-email-assets works fine.
3. Connect your own subdomain to it
In the bucket settings, add a custom domain: images.yourcompany.co.uk, or whatever subdomain you want to use. Because Cloudflare already manages your DNS, it sets this up automatically. The address is live within a few minutes.
4. Upload your signature images
Upload your PNG or JPEG signature banner, logo, or any other image you want to use. This is done through the Cloudflare dashboard. No command line, no technical setup. Make each file publicly accessible so email clients can load it.
5. Update your signature template
Each uploaded file gets a URL: images.yourcompany.co.uk/signature-banner.png. Put that URL into your email signature template wherever the old image address used to be. From this point, the image loads from your subdomain.
6. Give your marketing team their own access
Cloudflare lets you give specific people access to the bucket without giving them access to anything else. Your marketing manager can log in, upload a new banner with the same file name as the old, and the updated image is live immediately because the URL stays the same. No CMS. No developer. No waiting. Even better, if anyone looks at old emails of yours, they see the new banner. It’s like marketing all of a sudeen learned how to travel through time.
Image File Type Tips
PNG and JPEG images are universal for email signatures but PNG files are inherently larger in size. Only use these when you need some parts of the image to be transparent, like a logo. You also want these file sizes to be as small as possible. Read more about file types and sizes here.
What Else You Can Use This For
Once the subdomain is set up, you have a lightweight, permanent home for any image that needs to live at a stable branded address, independently of your website.
Campaign banners for outreach emails, images used in your email newsletters, event graphics, logos in specific formats for external use. Anything your team needs to share or embed by URL can live here. The broader benefit is that your marketing team has somewhere to manage these assets without needing website access or developer help.
What This Means for Recruiters
Your website platform is designed to run your website. It is not designed to be a permanent home for your email assets, and it will not behave like one if you ever move platforms.
Email is different from web. A signature goes out to hundreds of candidates and clients every day. A broken image in that signature is a small thing individually, but across a team and over time it becomes a noticeable brand issue and it tends to be discovered at the worst possible moment, usually during a platform migration when the team already has enough to deal with.
Moving your signature images to a subdomain you own takes about 30 minutes, costs nothing, and removes this problem permanently.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a developer to do this?
No. The entire setup is done through Cloudflare’s dashboard in a browser. If your DNS is already on Cloudflare, the process takes around 30 minutes. If you need to move your DNS first, that adds a step but it is a guided process with no code involved.
Will moving my DNS to Cloudflare affect my website?
Your website continues working as normal. You are changing where your DNS records are managed, not anything about how the website itself runs. Most agencies make this change without any disruption.
What if my signature images are already on SourceFlow, Volcanic, or another platform?
Upload your images to the new Cloudflare location, get the new URLs, and update your signature templates. The old URLs keep working until you remove them from the old platform. There is no forced cutover.
Is the Cloudflare free tier genuinely free for this?
Yes. The free tier covers 10 GB of storage and 10 million file requests per month. A full set of agency email signature assets will typically use a few megabytes. You would need a very unusual volume of email activity to come anywhere near the free tier limits.
Can I do this without moving my DNS to Cloudflare?
The custom subdomain feature requires your domain to be managed through Cloudflare DNS. If your DNS is elsewhere, you would need to move it first. It is a one-time change and does not affect your website.
Need Help?
If you want a hand setting this up, or you would like a wider look at how your email infrastructure is configured (sending domains, authentication records, signature setup) book a call at quinset.co.uk/bookings.
