Updating your SPF record

As part of our IRM Newsroom product, we send out over 300,000 emails per month on behalf of our clients. As a default, these emails are set to be sent from news@irmau.com.

But we understand that you would often prefer if your email communication came from an email address with your business domain. That's great! The difficulty comes, however, when spam filters, or your own internal DNS security controls, flag emails that look like they come from one place but are actually sent from another.

Luckily, there is a way to whitelist our mail server, so it's safe to send on behalf of your business domain.
 

What is SPF?

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication standard that compares the email sender’s actual IP address to a list of IP addresses authorised to send mail from that domain. The IP list is published in the domain’s DNS record. There is also often an entry in an organisation's own internal DNS entries which will need to be updated.

Why is an SPF record important?

If you are sending mail from a domain but using a different mail server you will want to include an SPF record in your DNS settings to ensure the highest rate of deliverability. Thsi includes the internal DNS settings.

What do I need to do?

What you need to do may depend on the following scenarios:


I already have an existing SPF record and need to add to it.

If you already have an SPF record set for your root domain, you must add the following to that existing record:

include:sendgrid.net

Before the ~all mechanism of the existing record.


I need to create a new SPF record from scratch.

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

Do not create more than one SPF1 record for a given domain.

If you need more than one SPF record, you will want to merge the additional SPF records into a single SPF record.

I need to make an exclusion policy in the anti-spoofing system in my mail washer.

If you cannot use the SendGrid domain name in the exclusion policy (sendgrid.net) then we have an IP address you can use: 50.31.59.34

This means that if IRM or SendGrid changes that IP address for any reason the exclusion will no longer operate. We don't keep records of which clients have included this IP address in their exclusion policies.