Email this article to a friend

SPF: Prevent Email Being Flagged as Spam

How do I make sure email coming from my ECP account isn’t marked spam?

Since Email Center Pro is sending mail on behalf of your domain, some servers will determine this behavior to be suspicious. We recommend that users set up a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record, telling your domain (yourcompany.com) that your ECP account is an "authorized sender" (not spam).

If you already have an SPF Record, and you don't add Email Center Pro as an authorized sender, your outgoing mail may be flagged as spam, so don't hesitate to contact us with questions.

Not sure if you have an SPF Record?

If you're not sure whether you already have an SPF record, here's a tool you can use to check:

Click the following link to open the tool: http://www.mxtoolbox.com/spf.aspx
Enter your domain name into the first box (yourcompany.com)
Click the "SPF Record Lookup" button
If your domain has an SPF record already, its current configuration will be displayed

Set up an SPF Record

We provide a link, below, to a SPF Setup wizard. You will need to know your domain name and the subdomain for your Email Center Pro account (mycompany.emailcenterpro.com).

Click this link to open the SPF Setup Wizard: http://old.openspf.org/wizard.html?mydomain=example.com

Add Email Center Pro as a Valid Sender

To validate Email Center Pro as a sender, add the following to your SPF record:

include:emailcenterpro.com

The resulting string should look similar to this:

v=spf1 a mx include:emailcenterpro.com -all

The instructions may sound complicated, but if you have access to a domain control panel, this should be fairly straightforward to set up. If you have an SPF record set up already, you will need to make sure to run through the wizard instead of just copying the record provided above.

More information

Many mail servers use the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to determine which mail servers are to be considered "authorized" senders for that domain. The way this is implemented is using DNS records, similar to the type that tell Web browsers where to go when a user types in www.yourdomain.com.

SPF Record Links:

FAQ page: http://www.openspf.org/FAQ