Issue
I set up an SPF record but it isn’t validating.
Conditions
It is possible that your SPF record does not meet these necessary conditions to ensure Zendesk can send emails on your behalf:
- The record contains include:mail.zendesk.com explicitly within the TXT record
- The SPF record is configured as a TXT record
- The support address is present as an external support address
- The record was published for longer than TTL (time to live) and successfully propagated
Resolution Steps
If you’ve confirmed that the conditions above are met, then you will need to use a third-party tool to investigate your published SPF record. Any of these tools can display your published SPF records and notify you of errors:
Here is a list of the most common SPF errors with resolutions steps:
- Too Many DNS lookups – This error occurs when your number of “DNS-querying mechanisms” exceeds the SPF’s limit of 10. For more information about Too Many DNS lookups, see the article: Dmarcian.com: Too many DNS lookups.
- Multiple SPF records – To ensure your record is seen with all records, you will want to ensure you only have one record per domain. For more information about multiple SPF records, see the resource: Support.Google.com: multiple SPF records.
- Type 99 (SPF type record) deprecation – The SPF specific type was deprecated in favor of using a TXT record for its type. Ensure that TXT type DNS records are used. For more information about type 99 records, see the resource: Mxtoolbox.com: Type 99 Records
- IP address use – We do not support the use of I.P. records to validate your SPF record as we rotate servers and I.P. addresses often. If using an SPF compression tool, exclude mail.zendesk.com, as it will not validate within your Support instance.
- Propagation issues – If you are unable to see
include:mail.zendesk.comon your record using the tools above, reach out to your domain registrar (or DNS server provider) for further assistance, as they are the only ones able to resolve any propagation issues.
For more information on the SPF record specification, see the following resources: