Adding an SPF Record

The FormsFly platform uses SendGrid as our bulk emailing service, which means that all emails sent from our platform will run through SendGrid and be delivered by SendGrid servers.

NOTE: Due to the high levels of email spam that occur these days, you should add an SPF rule on your sending domain name to avoid having FormsFly emails blocked/bounced by recipient email servers.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication standard developed by AOL that compares the email sender’s actual IP address to a list of IP addresses authorized to send mail from that domain. The IP list is published in the domain’s DNS record.

If SendGrid is not included in your SPF record then you will probably receive email bounces pertaining to authentication issues.

Adding an SPF entry onto your web domain

To add an SPF record, you need to log into the administration area of your web domain or DNS provider’s website.

You may need to search the knowledge base of your web domain registrar for the details of how to add an SPF record.

For example, Namecheap’s article is here, while GoDaddy has help here.

A quick Google search for “add spf record <your registrar name>” should find you the help document for your specific registrar.

Once you have found the area in the admin site that lets you add DNS records to your custom domain, you need to include a SendGrid reference.

If you do not have an SPF record for your domain you must create a TXT record with the value:

   v=spf1 include:sendgrid.net ~all

Already have an SPF record for your domain?

No problem. You simply need to add the SendGrid include onto your existing record.

For example, if your record looks like this:

   v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.google.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com ~all

You just need to add include:sendgrid.net at the end of the string, before the ~all mechanism, like so:

   v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.google.com include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:sendgrid.net ~all

Make sure that you save/apply your SPF record changes.

Once this is done, the number of email bounces/blocks that you experience when sending emails from our platform should be much reduced.