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I have a web server with a community website on it, and 1 subdomain on another ip. I use Cloudflare, and made outlook.com handle my mail for me. However my web server also sends mail. For example, a registration mail, or an invoice. Currently I have my spf record set up as follows:

mydomain.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 include:hotmail.com ~all"

and my mx records point to the hotmail.com mail servers. However, mails send directly from the server seem to be marked as spam rather easily. Probably because the ~all is not a very safe thing to do. How to only include the mail I send? I was thinking of:

mydomain.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 ptr include:hotmail.com -all"

THe ptr record seems to require a correct ip lookup. However, the ip is obfuscated by cloudflare.

How to correctly set up the spf record with cloudflare?

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v=spf1 a include:hotmail.com -all

Using a will allow any A record to send email as you stated you have a www site and a subdomain.

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  • So the ptr is not necessary? v=spf1 include:hotmail.com a ptr -all
    – Geert
    Feb 20, 2014 at 6:40
  • You can set this up with whoever hosts your servers. Most have a control panel to add reverse DNS. If not, contact them about it.
    – Papa
    Feb 20, 2014 at 7:21
  • I can set my SPF records myself. I was just wondering why the ptr record is not necessary. does a already include ptr. When do i need the ptr?
    – Geert
    Feb 20, 2014 at 10:57
  • In your case, the PTR doesn't work in your SPF entry cause you don't own the IP. Your hosting provider owns the IP and they have control over Reverse DNS records. A records don't cover PTR as it's a separate thing. When someone does a reverse lookup, they hit the IP of your server, not a domain name, and your hosts dish up the record themselves like this: IP x.x.x.x is mapped to www.domain.com.
    – Papa
    Feb 21, 2014 at 5:16
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Include the IP address of the server sending the emails:

v=spf1 ip4:123.45.67.89 include:hotmail.com -all

The Cloudflare IP addresses is only used for delivering content over HTTP, emails will still be sent directly from your own server, so the IP is always the same. If you have a Host record pointing directly to your server you can use that instead:

v=spf1 a:server.domain.tld include:hostmail.com -all
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    This is a pretty imporant point - with cloudflare the IP resolved for the domain will not be the origin server that will send the email.
    – Mark
    Mar 22, 2015 at 22:49

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