How to properly add an SPF record for a third-party email service when you already have one

Many internet services that send email from your domain name will require you to add an SPF record to your domain’s DNS recordset. For instance, here’s what you’ll see when you set up email with hey.com:

If you don’t already have an SPF record at your root domain, then adding this TXT record is exactly what you want to do:

By the way, @ just means “root”, so this SPF record applies to kawaicheung.io, not any other subdomains.

What if you already have an SPF record on your domain?

If you already have an existing SPF record for your domain, don’t add another one.

You can only have one SPF record for your root domain. (And if you happen to have an SPF record for any subdomain—for example beta.kawaicheung.io—you only want one per subdomain as well.)

Instead, add just the “include” portion to your existing SPF record after the v=spf1 part and before the all directive. For instance, if I already have an SPF record on my root domain whose value is this…

v=spf1 a mx ip4:192.0.2.1 include:_spf.createsend.com -all

…I would add include:_spf.hey.com to it like this:

v=spf1 a mx ip4:192.0.2.1 include:_spf.createsend.com include:_spf.hey.com -all

I hope this helps!