I need some help with email, cloudflare, SPF, DKIM errors - who is an expert?

[Al]

Hi, really struggling with getting my emails approved as not spam or phishing across a couple of sites. Anyone here a bit of an expert with that kind of thing and willing to help?

In exchange you'll get a super warm feeling.

 

[Cedric]

It all starts with the IP. If the IP is blacklisted, then there’s literally nothing that you can do.

 

[Al]

Yeah, that's not it as emails work on the same IP with other domains.

 

[Cedric]

Yeah, that's not it as emails work on the same IP with other domains.

I’m suspecting it’s a newly registered domain? It usually takes a few weeks until it’s no longer considered spam. And even then some users can still have it in their spam. Gmail and others also require you to add an spf record to the DNS.

 

[Al]

Gmail and others also require you to add an spf record to the DNS.

Really? You don't say.

I'll redirect to the title: I need some help with email, cloudflare, SPF, DKIM errors.

 

[Arantor]

So, do you have an SPF record currently?

If not you will need to add a TXT record to your domain that says the following:

v=spf1 ip4:a.b.c.d -all

a.b.c.d should be the server’s IP address (real IP address because email going out will be the server connecting out rather than in. The -all part indicates that any email for your domain not sent by the a.b.c.d IP address is fake. (You can say ~all instead for “this is probably spam but don’t just delete it outright”)

If you are using Gmail for sending email (e.g. you have domain.com and you are using [email protected] in emails) you will want to add include:_spf.google.com after the ip4 bit to also say that Gmail is allowed to send emails from your domain legitimately.

DKIM is another battle entirely. Your host probably needs to get involved in that situation since that’s getting into configuring a signature in DNS and then a variant of the same signature to actually sign emails before they go out. How this is done depends on whether the host is using sendmail, exim, postfix etc.