Glossary Entry
What is SPF?
What SPF actually means, buzzwords removed — with the example that makes it land.
The short answer
SPF is a DNS record naming the mail servers allowed to send for your domain, which gives receivers a way to spot a forged sender.
What follows: the longer explanation, a picture that holds, the practical stakes, and the places you will genuinely meet it.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
100+
Terms in the jargon buster
2 min
Average read time
Plain
English throughout
24/7
People, if you get stuck
It lives in one TXT record, and there must only ever be one. That record names your genuine sources — hosting mail servers, newsletter platform, CRM — usually through include mechanisms, and ends with a marker saying how harshly to treat everything else.
What it examines is the delivering server rather than the message. Hence forwarding breaks it, hence DKIM exists as the cryptographic counterpart, and hence DMARC sits over both deciding what the combined result means.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework), by way of an analogy
A sheet on the reception desk naming the couriers permitted to deliver under your letterhead. Anybody consulting it can pick out a van that was never written down.
Carry that picture with you and most documentation on the topic loses its mystery on a first read.
Why it matters to a site owner
A missing or malformed SPF record is the commonest quiet drag on deliverability. Receivers downgrade unauthenticated mail without telling anybody, and the repair is one DNS record, carefully audited.
That, incidentally, is the bar for any technical term — not 'could I lecture on it' but 'would I recognise it as the answer to my problem'. For this one, you now would.
One worked example
One business names two sources in its SPF record: the hosting mail servers and the invoicing platform. Forge that domain from a machine somewhere else and the check fails at every receiver that bothers to run it.
Scale that example across every website online and you have described the whole job of the concept in one stroke.
Where it sits inside your own account
Here it largely looks after itself, since the defaults are sensible and the panel puts the controls within reach the moment you want them. Read on: DKIM, DMARC, TXT Record and SMTP.
The rate you register at is the rate you renew at, so year two costs precisely what year one did — nothing lying in wait on the invoice.
A jargon buster from the people who answer the tickets
Sooner or later every confusing hosting term turns into a support ticket, so we defined the hundred commonest ones properly — once, in the same plain English we use with customers.
Hosted somewhere else already? We move the whole site at no charge, usually within 24 hours, and it goes on answering visitors throughout.
- 100+ entries, plain English all the way
- Ordinary analogies, working examples
- Neighbouring ideas linked together
- Written by our own support engineers
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Stakes made explicit
More than what a thing is: the moments it turns out to be the answer to a problem you have.
Tied to real hosting
Examples name platforms you would genuinely use, never an abstract diagram on a whiteboard.
Analogies that hold
Every concept comes with a mental model that returns exactly when you need it.
Jargon-free by design
Definitions written for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — translation rather than restatement.
Cross-wired entries
Related terms point at each other, so one lookup compounds into working knowledge.
The next step, drawn out
Carry on into DKIM and DMARC — ideas rarely travel alone, so the neighbours are linked in.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Find it in your own account
Nothing teaches a hosting term faster than finding it in your own panel; five minutes of looking beats an hour of reading.
- 2
Check the defaults as they stand
The platform ships sensible defaults for this — check rather than assume, and your setup becomes something you know instead of hope.
- 3
Chase the neighbouring terms
Hosting terms travel in groups — DKIM, DMARC and TXT Record finish this one's picture, each a two-minute read away.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- The name's first year included when you order annually
- Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller
- NVMe SSD storage on every tier, not only the dear ones
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- A renewal figure identical to the one you registered at
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- Staging copies for trying a change before it goes live
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old one lapses
Frequently Asked
The questions that come up most
Why is only one SPF record allowed?
Because the specification says so. Two records do not combine, they cancel each other, and receivers treat the domain as having broken SPF entirely. When a new sending service appears, fold it into the record you have rather than publishing a second.
What do ~all and -all mean at the end?
They set the failure policy. The tilde is softfail, meaning anything unlisted should be treated as suspect. A minus means hardfail: reject it. Start soft while you work out who genuinely sends for you, then tighten once DKIM and DMARC reporting confirm the list is complete.
How do payments and auto-renewal work?
You pay by credit or debit card through a secure checkout, and renewals bill at the same rate as the original order. Every invoice sits in your client area, and auto-renewal switches off with a toggle in the account — no telephone call needed.
If I cancel, what becomes of my site and files?
They remain yours. Download a full copy from the panel whenever you like, before or during cancellation. Names stay registered in your name for the term you paid for and can move to any registrar once the standard 60-day window has passed.
Keep reading
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
DKIM puts a cryptographic signature on outgoing mail, letting receivers confirm it came from your domain an…
SMTP
Outbound mail travels on SMTP, from your mail app to your mail server and onwards from there to servers els…
How to Publish a DMARC Policy
The way it is really done, in order, with the usual mistake pointed out.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress looked after for you — LiteSpeed caching, staging copies and a daily backup.
DirectAdmin Reseller Hosting
Lighter DirectAdmin reseller hosting at a lower monthly rate.
Changing hosts? Run through our checklist first.
A plain order of work for a move nobody visiting will notice: which files go over first, how to carry the mail across without losing a message, when exactly to repoint DNS, and the two mistakes behind nearly every outage we are asked to rescue.
Your site has earned better hosting.
Free SSL, a free migration, renewals billed at the original rate, and people on support around the clock. That is the whole of it.
View WordPress Hosting plans