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While roughly 306.4 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2020, the figure is expected to increase to over 361.6 billion daily emails in 2024. Mail servers are responsible for separating real emails from spam.
A valid SPF record will improve your deliverability while helping to prevent spammers from using your domain. This is essential for maintaining a positive domain reputation and reducing your email's likelihood of going to the spam folder.
How does SPF affect email deliverability?
There are hundreds of factors that go into reaching the inbox. Sender Policy Framework is only one of them. Every mailbox has different rules. Some may allow your emails to get delivered without SPF, while others may reject your message.
Mail Server Rejection due to NO SPF Record:
Having an SPF record does not guarantee you will reach the inbox, but it will increase your email's probability of being delivered to your recipient.
Rules before creating an SPF record
Setting up your SPF doesn’t have to be rocket science, but it can mean the difference between your email reaching the INBOX or being sent to SPAM.
What does the Folderly testing tool cover with regards to SPF?
Too many lookups
No SPF record published
SPF Fail – Server IP not listed within SPF record
Take more attention to:
SPF does not offer any reporting options like DMARC, which makes it harder to manage.
SPF uses the “envelope from” to determine the sending domain, not the “From” header, shown in most clients as the message's actual sender.
SPF records have a limit of 10 lookups. You can avoid this lookup limit by using an SPF Flattening tool such as https://www.autospf.com, which will convert your SPF record into IP addresses and help you manage it.
If your SPF record ends in ?all, it is equivalent to not having an SPF record published at all. We suggest updating your SPF record to use ~all instead.
Be careful when copying and pasting your SPF record into your DNS settings. We suggest pasting it onto a Google Doc “without formatting” first. Then, copy it into your DNS settings to avoid potential formatting issues.