An SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record is like a list that tells email servers which IP addresses are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain. It helps protect against email spoofing, where someone tries to send emails pretending to be from your domain.
Here’s how it works:
- Setting it up: You create an SPF record in your domain’s settings, where you list the email servers that are allowed to send emails for your domain. To make it easy for you, you can utilise our SPF Record Generator tool to generate an SPF record for your domain without making any syntax issues.
- Checking emails: When someone sends you an email, the receiving email server checks the SPF to make sure the email is coming from one of the authorized servers listed in your SPF record.
- What happens next: If the email is sent from an authorized server, it passes the check. If it’s not from an authorized server, it could be flagged as suspicious or sent to the spam folder or rejected, depending on your DKIM verification results and DMARC policy.
For example, an SPF might look like this:
v=spf1 ip4:111.0.5.0/24 include:_spf.google.com ~all
This says that emails from the IP range “111.0.5.0/24” and Google’s servers are allowed to send emails on behalf of your domain.
Basically, the SPF together with DMARC and DKIM records help keep your emails secure and ensures that bad actors can’t send fake emails pretending to be from you.
