Multiple SPF record for gmail and amazon SES

Question

Hello I own a website which uses 2 different ways to sent emails to users:

-gmail configured like support@example.com -amazon SES

The problem is that the emails sent with SES goes allways into spam! my SPF record looks like: "v=spf1 include:amazonses.com include:_spf.google.com ~all" my TXT record looks like: "v=spf1 include:amazonses.com include:_spf.google.com ~all"

I have just changed this records as above, should I need to wait 48 hours or something similar?

Are this correct settings? if yes what could be the reason of my problem?

Answer 1

The first comment is actually not entirely correct!

Mechanisms can be prefixed with one of four qualifiers:

"+"  Pass
"-"  Fail
"~"  SoftFail
"?"  Neutral

SoftFail is usually the better choice than Fail because SPF has some flaws and a Fail could prevent some forwarded emails to not arrive at all instead of being flagged as possible spam. (I have experience with those problems since I have worked for several email providers)

Make sure to test your SPF records. You can use this website to test them: http://spf.myisp.ch

Answer 2

First, as others noted, you are using SoftFail ~all . From openspf.org Record Syntax :

SoftFail: The SPF record has designated the host as NOT being allowed to send but is in transition

Intended action: accept but mark

You should use HardFail -all if you want the emails to be rejected when sent from an unauthorized server.

SPF protection is used to prevent spoofing . It's there to define the servers that are authorized to send emails for a certain domain. Generally, if the spf fail, the email will just be rejected and will not get into the spams.

There's a lot of possible reasons an email is getting into the spams, but it's generally because your email has been flagged as spam by a content analysis tool like SpamAssassin . You should contact whoever is managing the email filtering and ask them why exactly your email got in the spams.