How-to · Intermediate · 15 minutes
How to Create an SPF Record
Everything you need to state publicly which servers are allowed to send email as your domain — the steps in order, the snag to watch, and the tip our support desk gives everybody.
Straight answer first
In a line: state publicly which servers are allowed to send email as your domain — a intermediate-level task that takes 15 minutes.
Below you get the exact steps, the classic snag, and a tip from the support desk. Where our platform handles a step for you, the guide says so rather than making you do the robot's work.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 1 August 2026
Intermediate
Skill needed
5
Stages to finish
Free
Help included
Tested
On our own kit
You do not need to be technical for this. The walkthrough is written for first-timers, tested on our own platform, and honest about which parts are genuinely fiddly and which are merely unfamiliar.
Rule of the road: read the snag section before you begin rather than after. It is harvested from the tickets of people who did it the other way round.
The shape of the work
From start to finish, you will list out every legitimate sender first, write out the single txt record, publish it at the domain root, count up your dns lookups and check it with a validator.
No stage needs code or a terminal unless the guide says so outright, and where it does, the exact commands are printed. The full step-by-step sits below; the sections around it give the context that makes it stick.
The mistake nearly everyone makes
Adding a second SPF record for a new service rather than editing the one already there. Two SPF records equal no SPF at all, and deliverability degrades quietly while both records look perfectly correct on their own.
Forewarned really is forearmed here. This one mistake accounts for most of the frustration the subject produces, and it is entirely avoidable once somebody names it.
The tip we hand out to everybody
Finish with ~all rather than -all until DKIM is in place and your monitoring says the sender list is complete. Strictness belongs at the end of this process, not the beginning of it.
Small habits like this are the real difference between people who find hosting easy and people who find it stressful. The tools are identical; the working method is not.
What you can skip on a Hosting Seller plan
We have automated the steps that do not deserve your time: certificates issue and reissue themselves, the installer handles application setup, the daily backup covers the what-if, and per-site settings live in a panel instead of a config file. The guide above covers what remains — the part that is actually about your site.
And when a step misbehaves anyway, support answers at any hour with the actual fix, not a knowledge-base link and a shrug. Half our best guides began life as a pattern in the ticket queue.
A good platform makes every guide shorter
Every walkthrough on our how-to shelf is tested on the platform we actually run — cPanel, LiteSpeed, NVMe, one-click installs — so the instructions match your screen instead of gesturing vaguely at it.
NVMe disks and LiteSpeed caching sit on the shelf at every price point, not behind a premium tier.
- Step by step, tested exactly as printed
- The snag flagged before you reach it
- The dull steps are already automated
- People on hand at any hour if you stall
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
5 steps, no filler
Each stage is a few minutes of steady clicking, with the fiddly parts marked as fiddly.
Help on the counter
Stuck on step three at midnight? Support answers at any hour, mid-guide included.
Automation where it belongs
SSL, backups and installs run themselves here, so the guide covers only what is genuinely yours to do.
No jargon toll
Terms are explained where they appear or linked to the glossary — nothing assumes you already know.
Scoped honestly
State publicly which servers are allowed to send email as your domain is a intermediate-level task — this guide budgets 15 minutes and says which steps the platform absorbs.
The snag, named early
The classic mistake for this exact job is flagged before step one, so 15 minutes stays 15 minutes.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
List out every legitimate sender first
Hosting mail, the newsletter platform, the CRM, the invoicing tool — anything that sends as you@yourdomain belongs in the record. Making that list honestly is the difficult part of this job.
- 2
Write out the single TXT record
Start with v=spf1, add an include: mechanism for each service plus your host's own servers, and finish with ~all. Every service publishes the exact include string it wants you to use.
- 3
Publish it at the domain root
One TXT record on @ — one, and only one. A second SPF record does not extend the first; it invalidates both of them and leaves you worse off than having none at all.
- 4
Count up your DNS lookups
SPF allows ten DNS lookups in total, and nested includes from a handful of services get you there faster than you would think. Flatten or prune until you are safely under the limit.
- 5
Check it with a validator
An SPF checking tool confirms the syntax and counts the lookups for you. Sending a message to a test address then shows the pass sitting in the headers where receiving servers will read it.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
- Staging copies so changes get tested before they go live
- A 30-day money-back guarantee on every hosting plan
- Upgrades apply to the account in place, with no move between plans
- A 99.9% uptime commitment, watched by monitoring day and night
- The Softaculous installer for one-click application setup
- PHP versions picked per site from the panel
- Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for your own client
- WordPress Toolkit, with updates applied for you
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
What does an SPF record actually stop?
It lets a receiving server check whether the machine delivering the message was authorised by your domain, which raises the cost of casual spoofing and feeds DMARC's decisions. It is one leg of the SPF, DKIM and DMARC tripod, not a defence on its own.
My newsletters still fail SPF after adding the include — why is that?
The platform is almost certainly sending from its own envelope domain, so SPF passes on theirs and alignment fails on yours. The fix is the platform's custom-domain or DKIM setup, which lines the signing up with your domain properly.
Which control panel comes with the account?
cPanel, which the whole trade already knows. That means every tutorial online matches what you see, your backups restore onto any cPanel host anywhere, and what you learn here stays useful for life. Plesk and DirectAdmin are stocked on specific plans for anyone who prefers them.
How quickly can I be up and running?
Minutes, not days. The account opens the moment the order clears, the domain — free for year one on annual plans — attaches straight away, and the one-click installer puts WordPress or any of 400+ applications on the page before you leave your chair. Already have a site elsewhere? Hand it over and we move it free, usually inside a day.
Can I set the PHP version myself?
Yes — PHP versions are chosen per site from the control panel, so an old application and a current one can sit side by side on the same account. Extensions and per-site settings live in the same screen, and none of it needs a support ticket.
What does round-the-clock support actually stretch to?
People at the counter at every hour, and a scope that takes in the practical work: mailbox setup, DNS records, WordPress trouble, restores. Not 'the server responds, ticket closed'. Ask us something hard before you order — the reply is a fair sample of what you would get afterwards.
Can one plan hold more than a single website?
From the Pro tier upward, yes — several sites, each with its own domain, mailboxes and certificate, all under one account. If those extra sites belong to clients rather than to you, reseller hosting is the better fit: it gives each one proper separation.
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Proper mailboxes on your own domain, at one flat price.
Packing up and moving host? Take our checklist.
A plain running order for a move nobody notices: what to copy first, how to carry email across without dropping a single message, when to point DNS, and the two slips behind nearly every hour of downtime we get called about.
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