With the appearance of email, several years ago, a revolution was generated in terms of the area of communication where we can not only send text messages between several users, but we can also receive any type of document or multimedia file.
When sending our emails it is important that our emails are delivered correctly to the inbox of our recipients. To guarantee this, there are certain records such as SPF, DKIM and DMARC that we must configure so that email servers such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo recognize us as owners of the domain, in order to prevent emails from reaching the SPAM tray.
What is an SPF record? How do I configure it in cPanel?
A SPF certificate is a piece of information that allows you to know if an email comes from a server that is authorized to sending those emails, technically consists of a record in the DNS record of our domain that indicates whether an IP address is authorized to send emails on behalf of the domain.
To configure this SPF record we must follow these steps:
- Enter the cPanel of our domain
- We look for the Email section
- Click on Email Deliverability.
- Once we are in this option we must make sure that the SPF is activated for our account, if it is not we must only enable it.
After having our SPF record enabled, we must go to the section titled Additional IP address blocks for your domains (IPv4 or IPv6) where we must add the IP that we want to approve for sending emails .
After adding the IP in the SPF record, just apply the changes by clicking on the blue button at the bottom of the page with the name Update.
Inclusions in our SPF registry
If we are using other platforms to send emails such as GSuite or Zoho, they ask you to include a record in your SPF to validate the emails, as is the case with GSuite, which asks us to add the registration include:_spf.google.com, in this case to add it we must enter the cPanel of our domain, go to the Email section and then enter Authentication.
Once there we must look for the title List of included (INCLUDED) and click on the Add button. In the text box that will open we must enter the inclusion value, as is the case with GSuite _spf.google.com.
Once added, all that remains is to press the Update button as in the previous case.
What is DKIM logging and how is it enabled?
The DKIM is the initials of the English domain keys for mail servers and is a widely used tool to avoid fraudulent emails and spam emails, basically what is done is that there is an encrypted signature that is sent in the email and when a server like Gmail or Hotmail receives it, they ask the DNS server if that server is authorized to send those emails.
To enable DKIM follow these steps:
- Enter your website's cPanel
- Go to the Email section
- Click on Authentication.
- Click on Activate (unless it is already activated).
What is DMARC registration and how to activate it?
The DMARC registry is a standard that aims to unify SPF and DKIM validations. It is important to clarify that this registry does not replace these last two names, but is a way to unify how they are published and mainly what ISPs such as Gmail or Outlook should do if they receive an email that fails validation.
To add this record we must:
- Entering our domain's cPanel
- Go to the Domains section
- Click on the Zone Editor option.
- Click where it says Manage to display the different types of records that we can add.
- In our case we need to add a TXT record.
- Add a new TXT record by clicking on the button called Add Record and then selecting the TXT record.
Finally, what we must do is set the following values so that our DMARC record is valid and taken correctly by ISPs.
- Name: _dmarc.yourdomain.com. (where it says yourdomain.com you must enter the name of yours)
- TTL: 14400
- Type: TXT
- Register or Value: v=DMARC1; p=none
Once these values have been placed, all that remains is to click on the button called Add Record.
It is very important to have these three records active and well configured to ensure that our emails are correctly received by the different ISPs as well as to avoid the involuntary sending of SPAM from our domain.
