SPF, DKIM, and DMARC Configuration to Validate Your Emails

These two services are designed to prevent someone from sending emails pretending to be you, but if you configure them incorrectly, you may end up blocking yourself. Remember that, for SPF and DKIM to work, you must use our DNS (or manually replicate these records in your current DNS service).

The SPF service (Sender Policy Framework), in short, "tells" the mail server receiving an email sent from your address which servers it should accept it from. If the sender used a server that is not yours, SPF tells the receiving server to mark the message as spam or discard it.

The DKIM service (DomainKeys Identified Mail) works similarly, but it signs the email with a public signature, and the server checks that it matches the domain record. If it does not match, the message is marked as spam or discarded, depending on the recipient's settings.

How do I activate SPF and DKIM?

Both are configured from cPanel, under Email > Email Deliverability.

To configure email authentication, first log in to your cPanel at the address shown in the screenshot below (replacing "mydomain.com" with your site's actual URL).

Once you have logged in to your panel, look for the Email Deliverability tool within the Email group, as shown in the screenshot below:

Within this service, you will find an option to activate DKIM and SPF. Once they are enabled, the service will be protected.

If you click Customize within SPF, you can specify the records. spf.duplika.com is included by default and must be used with any shared hosting plan.

If you send emails only from your website or from email accounts on our server, we recommend activating the Use the “-all” Entry" option.

If you use Gmail to send email with your domain, you need to add the _spf.google.com server to validate messages sent from there.

How do I activate DMARC?

DMARC records in your DNS define how emails sent from your domain that do not pass the previously configured SPF and DKIM validation should be handled.

If you do not want to receive reports about these emails, to activate DMARC you will need to add a new DNS record from our cPanel, Zone DNS Editor, and add:

• Name: _dmarc.yourdomain.com. (replacing yourdomain.com with your domain)

• TTL: 14400 or default value

• Type: TXT

• Value: v=DMARC1; p=none

Optionally, if you want to receive reports about sent emails that do not pass validation, use the following value:

v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected] ; ruf=mailto:[email protected]

(replacing [email protected] with the email address you want to use to receive these reports).