We’ve added SPF resource record monitoring to DNS Check.

SPF records are used to control which IP addresses and services are authorized to send email for a domain name.

SPF records are unusual in that they can actually be published using either of the following resource record types:

  • TXT resource records - these are general purpose DNS records that map a domain to a string of text. These have a number of uses including SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication.
  • SPF resource records - these are specialized DNS records that map a domain to a string of text for the purposes of SPF authentication

DNS Check has supported monitoring TXT resource records since June 2015, so technically, you could use our service to monitor SPF records that were published using TXT resource records before today. What we added in today was support for checking SPF resource records:

SPF Record Check

The historic recommendation was to publish SPF records using both the TXT and SPF resource record types. This has changed. RFC 7208 states that SPF records must be published as TXT resource records only.

We recommend following RFC 7208, and replacing your SPF resource records with TXT resource records. That said, you may have reasons for not making the switch immediately, so we support monitoring both resource record types.

You can find more information on SPF records, including information on how to monitor them on our Check DNS SPF Records page.