If your business emails keep landing in your recipients' spam folders, missing SPF and DKIM records are usually the reason. These are DNS records that prove to receiving mail servers that an email claiming to come from your domain was actually sent by your mail server, not by someone impersonating you. Setting them up usually takes a few minutes and can make a real difference in whether your invoices, quotes, and client emails actually reach the inbox.
What SPF and DKIM Do
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a DNS record that lists which mail servers are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain. When another mail server receives a message from your domain, it checks this record to confirm the message came from an approved source.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds a digital signature to outgoing emails. The receiving server checks this signature against a public key published in your DNS to confirm the message wasn't altered in transit and genuinely came from your domain.
Without these records, your emails are more likely to be flagged as suspicious, especially by services like Gmail and Outlook, which apply stricter spam filtering to unauthenticated senders.
How to Add SPF and DKIM Records
Both records are added through your domain's DNS zone. The exact screens differ depending on whether your hosting account uses cPanel or DirectAdmin.
In cPanel
- Log in to cPanel and go to the Email section.
- Click Authentication (sometimes listed as Email Authentication).
- Next to SPF, click Enable. cPanel generates and adds the correct SPF TXT record for you automatically.
- Next to DKIM, click Enable as well. cPanel generates a DKIM key pair and publishes the public key as a TXT record.
- If you use a third-party service to send email (such as a billing system or mailing list tool) alongside your ZIPROF mailbox, you may need to add that service's servers to your SPF record manually. Go to Zone Editor, find the existing SPF TXT record, and add the extra "include" value your provider gives you.
In DirectAdmin
- Log in to DirectAdmin and go to DNS Management under the domain you want to configure.
- Check whether an SPF TXT record already exists (it usually starts with v=spf1). If not, click Add Record, select TXT, and add one covering your mail server.
- For DKIM, look for a DKIM toggle under Email or Email Settings for the domain. Enabling it publishes the DKIM public key as a TXT record automatically.
- If DirectAdmin doesn't show a DKIM key for your domain, contact ZIPROF support to have DKIM signing enabled on your mail server.
DNS changes don't take effect instantly. Give it some time before testing, and see how long DNS changes take to propagate if you're not seeing the new records yet.
How to Check That SPF and DKIM Are Working
- Send a test email from your business address to a Gmail account.
- Open the message, click the three-dot menu, and choose Show original.
- Look for SPF: PASS and DKIM: PASS near the top of the report. If either shows FAIL or NEUTRAL, double-check the record was added correctly and allow more time for propagation.
If you need to add or edit the underlying DNS records manually, see how to add or edit DNS records for the general steps.