SPF record issues, DKIM / DMARC not set up.

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      • Lori Stalter
        October 15, 2020 at 9:38 am #3524227

        I’m having issues with webforms forwarded from my website constantly marked with possible spam or phishing warnings in GSuite. I also just had a client email me that their order request failed to deliver at all (she got a bounce back notice).

        I dug around in the GSuite help files/forums and the recommendation was to run the checkmx toolbox app.

        The result was that the SPF record is not in the correct format and that DKIM and DMARC are not set up.

        Is this something I can fix myself? I’m not understanding much of the terminology thrown at me when I try to google how to do this.

        Thanks!

        • Lori Stalter
          October 15, 2020 at 9:38 am #3524233

          I think I fixed this on my own.

          I went to WP Mail SMTP on my wordpress dashboard and followed the directions to set up a Gmail API to talk directly to my GSuite.

          The test email worked. So did submitting a contact us form as well as reserving inventory on our mock client inventory page. No more warning labels and the order request arrived without being blocked.

          Hopefully that’s the end of this issue. Going into the holiday selling season, I can’t afford to miss getting requests for inventory to ship out.

          I’ll post an update if I run into more issues.

          • Lori Stalter
            October 15, 2020 at 9:38 am #3524234

            Although….

            The Check MX tool now says:

            • Domain must have at least one mail server.
            • DKIM is not set up.
            • DMARC is not set up.
            • There should be a valid SPF record.
            • No Google mail exchangers found. Relayhost configuration?

            Ugh. Do I need to give my new settings time before the tool detects them or did I just make matters worse? Or does none of this matter, because I’m relaying my webform data directly through the API I just created?

            • David Risley
              October 15, 2020 at 9:38 am #3524253

              GSuite, if I recall, actually provides instructions on how to set up SPF records and all that. It is basically a bunch of crap (<– technical term 😉 ) that you copy/paste and add to the record for your domain. You do it at your domain registrar.

              https://support.google.com/a/answer/33786?hl=en

              If you’re using the GSuite API for your forms, that may just take care of it. SPF records, would be more important if you were sending out bulk email from your domain, but for simple web forms, it isn’t as big a deal. As long as YOU get the email, should be OK.

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