SPF (Sender Policy Framework) Record:
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record is used to identify that which email servers are approved to send email on behalf of your domain. SPF is nothing but one of the types of (DNS) record.
The main purpose of an SPF record is to avoid any spammers from sending unwanted Spam messages with the fake identity or addresses of your domain. By such way, the recipients’ servers can verify the SPF record of the particular domain and it can check the emails arrives from an authorized mail server.
When you decided to enable the email gateway feature for your domain, you will need to make sure both your local or remote Email server’s and the outbound gateway SMTP server address is included in the SPF record.
This SPF (Sender Policy Framework ) record is typically configured at your domain registrar or Hosting service provider end. SPF is none other than a TXT type DNS record. Every domain registrar or Domain service provider uses a different method of managing DNS records to maintain the reliability and reputation of your domain, Thus we recommend to focus on adding or managing the DNS records for your domain.
The important use of SPF records is that while having an SPF record, we can help our domain outgoing emails to ensure the legitimate one and it is less likely to be considered as spam, and the spammers will be restricted and kept away to spoof your domain.
If your domain having a failed configuration in an SPF record then it can be the same or worse than having no SPF record at all. A Perfect SPF record should have only one “v=spf1” entry and an “all” qualifier. It’s recommended that SPF records should only have a maximum of 10 entries, qualifiers, or mechanisms. Each and every item in the SPF record should be separated by spaces, counts as a single entry. Any duplicate or clone, records, items, or any kind of conflicting contents will invalidate or spoil your domain’s SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record and result in the recipient’s email server and its respective spam filter will ignore this record validation and flag your mail as spam. Excluding a server or host field from the SPF record that needs to be able to send email from your domain would cause any email you send from that host to be marked as spam and it will be rejected.