How to Troubleshoot Email Delivery Issues

Emails Not Delivered Due to SPF Error
 
The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email-authentication technique which is used to prevent spammers from sending messages on behalf of your domain. With SPF an organization can publish authorized mail servers. 

Setting up Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for your domain is both simple and necessary to prevent email delivery issues from occurring. Beyond the basic requirement of having a valid SPF record for ALL of your sending domains (and subdomains) implementing SPF is a vital step in achieving DMARC compliance.

Manually update your SPF record

Essentially, you set up an SPF record to reflect any IP addresses that will be sending email on your domain’s behalf. If your business has an SPF DNS record, it is publicly accessible. When an email is sent claiming to be from your domain, the recipient server checks your SPF record to see if the sender is authorized to send on your behalf. If yes, the email receiver recognizes the message is from you or a trusted third party and will choose to accept it based on your email reputation. If no, the email recipient can choose to examine the message more, quarantine it, or outright reject it. Hence, SPF is a powerful tool in the continuing fight against problematic email fraud (e.g., spoofing, phishing, spam).

To initiate SPF for your domain via your DNS hosting provider, follow these general guidelines:

  1. Access your account
  2. At Domains drop-down menu, select your domain name (click “Show All” if your domain is not displayed)
  3. Under the DNS & Zone Files menu, click “Edit DNS Zone File”
  4. Click “+ Add Row” to create a new record or edit an existing SPF record.
  5. Set the type to TXT and enter your SPF record in the right column.

v=spf1 include:gridnotify.com -all

  1. Click “Save” to incorporate changes

*Note: Instructions to implement SPF might differ for your specific DNS hosting provider.