Multiple SPF records on a domain?
Can more than one SPF record be present on the same domain? The answer is no; if a domain contains more than one SPF record, SPF will fail with a PermError.
A TXT record in the DNS known as an SPF record is one that begins precisely with “v=spf1” and is followed by a variety of mechanisms and/or modifiers.
A domain’s TXT records with the identical first character “v=spf1” are fetched to start an SPF check:
- It returns “none” if no such record is found
- If more than one such record is discovered, it returns PermError.
For instance, if yourdomain.com has two TXT records:
Record Type | Name | Value | TTL |
---|---|---|---|
TXT | yourdomain.com | v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com -all | Default |
TXT | yourdomain.com | v=spf1 include:servers.mcsv.net -all | Default |
All emails sent on yourdomain.com’s behalf will include PermError SPF authentication failures.
You must include all the mechanisms that have legitimate IP addresses in a single SPF record in order to fix the issue, as demonstrated below:
Record Type | Name | Value | TTL |
---|---|---|---|
TXT | yourdomain.com | v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:servers.mcsv.net -all | Default |
All of these prerequisites must be satisfied for SPF authentication to succeed:
- Your domain has exactly one SPF record
- which has the proper syntax
- a maximum of 10 DNS lookups
Conclusion
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