Validate Sender Policy Framework (SPF) Records

Need to make sure your SPF records are formatted correctly? Use the tool below to validate them! The tool will ensure the different parts of the SPF record are correctly set up and provide guidance if any piece can be improved.

Enter your SPF record below or a domain we can pull an SPF record from:

What is SPF?

The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method that allows the owner of a domain to specify which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of that domain.

SPF helps to prevent email spoofing, which is a common tactic used by spammers and phishers to send emails that appear to be from a legitimate source.

By using SPF, email providers can verify that incoming emails are coming from an authorized source, which helps to reduce the amount of spam and phishing emails that users receive.

What Does This Tool Check?

To ensure email providers can use the SPF record your domain has, you need to ensure it is formatted correctly and the items are valid. To help achieve this, this tool checks a variety of things including:

• The SPF record is not greater than 255 characters, the max length allowed for SPF records
• The SPF record contains the SPF version and it is at the beginning of the record
• The SPF record contains a catchall, which is at the end of the record, and is not too permissive
• The SPF record does not use the ptr mechanism which can result in a larger number of expensive DNS lookups and is now deprecated in SPF specification
• If the SPF record uses ip4 or ip6 mechanisms, their values are valid IP addresses or networks
• And several other checks