How to set up SPF on Porkbun

Setting up SPF on Porkbun comes down to one TXT record at the root of your domain, holding a line that starts v=spf1 and names the servers allowed to send mail as you.

Porkbun is the registrar and, when its own nameservers are in use, the DNS host that stores the domain’s records. It does not generate an SPF value itself; the reader takes that string from their email provider and publishes it here.

The order below is the record first and the console second, because the pasting takes two minutes and the thinking is all in the line itself.

What the record says, and why it lives in DNS

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a published list of the sources that may send mail for your domain. When a mail server receives a message with your domain in the return path, it fetches the TXT record at that domain, checks whether the connecting server’s address is on the list, and writes the result into the message headers for the filters that run afterwards.

That lookup goes to whichever nameservers the registry lists for your domain, and to nowhere else. This is why the record has to be published where your DNS is answered, and why a record saved in the wrong console is invisible to the world, however correct its text.

Open the domain in the Porkbun account and read the Authoritative Nameservers section. Porkbun’s own nameserver set is the curitiba, fortaleza, maceio and salvador names, so if those are showing, Porkbun is running the domain’s DNS and the record belongs here. If the section shows another company’s nameservers instead, such as Cloudflare, a web host or an email provider, the SPF record has to go there, and adding it at Porkbun has no effect.

Read the record before you paste it

An SPF record is a single string with three parts: the version tag, a list of mechanisms, and a closing catch-all. The version tag is always v=spf1, and a TXT record without it isn’t SPF at all.

Mechanisms come next, separated by spaces, and each one names a source of legitimate mail. include: pulls in another domain’s SPF record, which is how you authorise a mail provider or a newsletter tool: you name the hostname they publish and their list becomes part of yours. ip4: and ip6: name an address or a range directly, for a server you run yourself. a and mx authorise the hosts behind your domain’s own A and MX records.

redirect= hands the whole evaluation to another domain’s record; it’s a modifier rather than a mechanism, it can’t sit alongside an all, and it matters here because some hosts publish a record in that form on your behalf.

Each mechanism can carry a qualifier in front of it. + means pass and is the default, so include: and +include: are the same thing. - means fail, ~ means soft fail, and ? means neutral. The one qualifier that decides anything is the one on the last term.

That last term is all, and it says what to do about a source the mechanisms didn’t match. -all asks the receiver to fail unlisted mail. ~all asks it to accept the message and mark it suspect. ?all says nothing useful, and +all authorises the entire internet, which is worse than publishing no record.

Start with ~all while you’re confirming that the list is complete, then move to -all once a few weeks of ordinary sending have passed without a legitimate source turning up as unlisted. The choice between the two endings has its own page. Of the 316,600,902 domains carrying a grade in the September 2026 census, 84,153,064 (26.6%) end their record in ~all.

Two limits shape what you can put in the list. A domain gets one SPF record: a receiver that finds two TXT records starting v=spf1 treats the domain as having a permanent error, which counts the same as having none.

A record may also trigger at most ten DNS lookups during evaluation, counting each include:, a, mx and redirect= plus the lookups inside any record they pull in; an eleventh lookup fails the whole record. So a second sender goes into the existing record as another include:, and if the count is getting high, the mail provider’s help page usually says which of its hostnames costs the fewest lookups.

The record for Porkbun

Porkbun publishes nothing about SPF on its own. It stores exactly the TXT record the reader types into the Answer field and holds it against the domain’s nameservers.

v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all
v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all

Compare that block against what your mail provider’s own setup page tells you to publish. The include: hostname has to match theirs character for character, because it’s a DNS name the receiver will resolve, and a typo resolves to nothing. If you send from more than one service, each gets its own include: in the same line, in any order, before the all.

Enter the record, click by click

1. Sign in to Porkbun and open Account, then Domain Management.
2. Find the domain in the list and click its Details arrow.
3. Choose DNS Records to open the DNS editor.
4. Review the existing records for one that already starts with v=spf1.
5. If an SPF record is already present, open that record to edit it rather than adding another.
6. To add a new record, set Type to TXT.
7. Leave the Host field blank so the record applies to the domain itself.
8. Paste the SPF string into the Answer field with no surrounding quotes.
9. Leave TTL at the default, 600 is fine.
10. Click Add, or Save if editing an existing record.

Set Type to TXT. Leave Host blank, since Porkbun treats an empty Host as the root domain and appends nothing else to it. Put the SPF string in the Answer field, typed plain with no quotes around it. Leave TTL at the Porkbun default of 600.

Before you save, read the value back once. The whole string sits on one line with single spaces between terms, no line break, no trailing space, and nothing after the all. If the form already shows a TXT record beginning v=spf1, you’re editing that one, and the only reason to be adding a new row is that no such record exists.

Some of the mistakes on this form belong to this console rather than to SPF.

• Porkbun treats an empty Host field as the root domain. Typing @ in Host instead creates a record at the literal name @, which is wrong.
• The Answer field takes the SPF string plain. Porkbun stores it correctly without quotes, and wrapping it in double quotes can break the record.
• Porkbun allows only one SPF record per domain. A second v=spf1 TXT record is an error and breaks SPF entirely, so an extra sender goes into the existing record as another include: entry, not into a new TXT record.
• The DNS Records screen lists every record on the domain, so the existing SPF record, if there is one, sits right there among Porkbun’s own defaults and is easy to miss on a quick scan.

Wait, then check it

A saved change is not instant at Porkbun; it can take from a few minutes up to a couple of hours to show everywhere. The saved record then appears listed on the same DNS Records screen used to add it.

Once the change has had time to spread, run the free scan against your domain. It fetches the record the way a receiving mail server would, reports whether one is present, whether it parses, how many lookups it costs and which qualifier it ends on, and it checks DKIM and DMARC in the same pass.

Reopen DNS Records at Porkbun and confirm only one line starts with v=spf1, with the Host field showing as blank or as the root.

If the scan reports no record when you’ve saved one, the order of suspects is the nameserver check at the top of this page, then a second v=spf1 row that has been sitting in the zone for years, then a value the form mangled on the way in. A record that’s present but reports as invalid is nearly always one of the limits above: two records, too many lookups, a redirect= with an all after it, or quote marks that ended up doubled.

What a missing or broken record costs you

Of the 316,600,902 domains carrying a grade in the September 2026 census, 166,497,698 (52.6%) publish no SPF record at all. For any of them, a receiver has no list to check the sending server against, so mail from the real mailboxes and mail from a forger’s server arrive carrying the same amount of evidence. Your genuine messages then depend on the receiver’s other filters, and a share of them land in spam for no reason you can see.

A malformed record ends in the same place. A permanent error reads as no policy, and some receivers treat a domain that publishes a broken policy less kindly than one that publishes nothing.

What SPF does on its own is narrower than people expect. It authorises the server, judged against the envelope sender that the recipient never sees, and the result is a header line rather than an instruction. A forged message that fails SPF can still be delivered, because until a DMARC policy tells receivers what to do with a failure, they’re under no obligation to do anything with it.

SPF is the list, DMARC is what turns the list into an instruction receivers act on, and the SPF guide covers how the two fit together and how to read the result headers on a message you’ve sent yourself.

Figures as of 5 September 2026, from the September 2026 edition of the defaults.exposed census. Census numbers move every month; the current values are on the census data page.