Hi.
I’ve stumbled on an SPF record issue. Whenever I use SPF as a record type, the SPF is not recognized by many tools, among others MXtoolbox. When I use TXT as a record type I have no reported issues with my SPF record.
Since Netlify’s DNS zone offers SPF as a record type I’m just wondering if I am misusing this record type, and If I’m not misusing it, maybe Netlify should remove the SPF option from the record type list because I see other users puzzled by the SPF record not working. I think Netlify’s DNS zone is the only one I’ve seen offering SPF as a record type. I know Cloudflare doesn’t.
Cheers.
NS1 allows adding SPF:
So we do too (as we use NS1 for DNS).
SPF is a valid DNS record and a lot of users need it. As I understand, your setup needed TXT and not SPF, but removing that doesn’t seem like a valid option.
Thank you @hrishikesh for your time and effort in clarifying this issue. Still thinking though that there should be some distinction between those two records since the SPF record type is obviously causing issues for the users and some tools like MXtoolbox cannot read it.
In my case, although I’ve set the DKIM and SPF using the SPF field, my client’s emails were rejected by several recipients using Google Workspace with an error message specifically pointing to the missing SPF:
“The sender must authenticate with at least one of SPF or DKIM”
Changing SPF to use the TXT record resolved that issue.
Cheers.
I’m sorry, but I am struggling to see what we need to do here. Let me explain:
There are multiple types of DNS records, SPF and TXT being two of them.
Some services ask users to configure SPF records, others ask them to configure TXT.
We provide the option to user. From my point of view, the documentation that asks you to add a SPF record should be the one mentioning add a TXT record and not a SPF record.
