Cold email glossary

What is SPF?

Sender Policy Framework — a DNS TXT record listing which servers may send email for your domain.

SPF is a TXT record at the root of your domain, such as v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all. A receiving server looks up the record and checks whether the connecting server's IP is authorised. A domain may have only one SPF record and it may not require more than 10 DNS lookups to evaluate, or it fails. End the record with ~all (soft fail) or -all (hard fail), never +all.

Gmail requires SPF or DKIM from every sender and both from senders of 5,000+ messages a day.

Related terms

GlossaryDKIMDomainKeys Identified Mail — a cryptographic signature your mail provider adds to each message, verified against a public key published in your DNS.GlossaryDMARCA DNS policy record that tells receivers what to do when SPF and DKIM fail or don't align with the From domain, and asks them to send you reports.GlossaryEmail authenticationThe set of DNS-based checks — SPF, DKIM and DMARC — that let a receiving server verify an email really came from the domain it claims.

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