SOLVED What should SPF Record be if you're on a GoDaddy VPS?

[ItsMattSon]

Hi all,

I was using mxtoolbox (which I think is amazing!) to determine if my "deliverability" was good from a mail perspective and I've come across a few issues that I'll be tackling as soon as I can but one in particular had me guessing correct practice.

Since I am running in an OpenVZ container, I just realised from the test results that my VPS IP isn't necessarily the IP that mail comes from. Seems it goes out through the hardware node's smtp server?

1. Should my SPF Record be the 208. IP or left as my VPS's 97. IP? (refer to screenshot)
2. Just because I'm curious, why doesn't mail come from my VPS IP? I thought it would mail out from my VPS straight to the real world? Seems to go another.. route/server?

Thanks in advance!

 

[webhostuk]

In the right way it should be your VPS IPS that needs to be in SPF record and email should be sent received from your VPS IP only.
In email configuration check the setting if something is incorrectly set.

 

[ItsMattSon]

Oh, you know I should probably point out that my VPS is through GoDaddy, Inc. so maybe they force all smtp traffic through that server so they can count how many smtp relays you've used out of your daily 5000 quota? If that's unlikely, disregard that lol

I'm not sure where to check the configuration I'm afraid. I'll do a bit of digging around and see if I can figure it out!

 

[cPanelMichael]

Oh, you know I should probably point out that my VPS is through GoDaddy, Inc. so maybe they force all smtp traffic through that server so they can count how many smtp relays you've used out of your daily 5000 quota? If that's unlikely, disregard that lol

Hi Matt,

Email actually does go out from the IP address of the individual VPS by default, however you are correct that GoDaddy relays their SMTP traffic through an email relay server. Here's a related thread on GoDaddy's forums:

What are the correct GoDaddy SPF Settings For DNS ... - GoDaddy Community

You may want to reach out to their support team to verify the correct settings to use for your specific VPS.

Thanks!

 

[ItsMattSon]

Thanks Michael! I'll reach out to them to tell me how I should set up my spf record

 

[ItsMattSon]

Hi @cPanelMichael

All resolved! I figured it out myself without GoDaddy's help so I'm hoping it's right haha. It all checks out according to mxtoolbox though so I'm pretty happy with it.

I ended up setting the TXT record to:
v=spf1 +mx include:secureserver.net -all

Apparently the include mechanism will reference the spf record of the secureserver.net domain and then return if no match. Interestingly, there is no match of any IPs starting with 208.109 at secureserver.net but it has an include for ss1.domaincontrol.com which has an include for ss2.domaincontrol.com which does have the IP listed in its spf record (as 208.109.0.0/16).

According to Gmail:

Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 208.109.xx.xxx as permitted sender) client-ip=208.109.xx.xxx;

Would be useful I think if I set thread title to "GoDaddy VPS" i think instead of OpenVZ VPS. I believe we're sorted now :D

 

[cPanelMichael]

Hello,

I'm happy to see you were able to sort out the issue. Thanks for updating us with the outcome.