SPF Record - Too many DNS lookups

Question

I have been getting an error of 'too many DNS lookups' for my site's SPF record.

After I read the suggestions from the following posts, I decided to follow the advice to try and consolidate my services to reduce the number of lookups.

References: Too many DNS lookups in an SPF record PermError SPF Permanent Error: Too many DNS lookup

Right now my SPF record is this:

v=spf1 a include:servers.mcsv.net include:_spf.google.com include:spf.mtasv.net include:jangomail.com ~all 

I want to consolidate my services so that it ends up being this:

v=spf1 a include:servers.mcsv.net include:_spf.google.com ~all 

I would replace my jangomail with Mandrill (part of Mailchimp servers.mcsv.net) for my transactional emails. And mtasv.net is redundant because we don't use this service anymore.

My situation is exactly like the one posed in this question here:

SPF Record for Mandrill

Kaitlin from Mandrill suggests setting up an SPF record to include Mailchimp and Google Apps as per below.

v=spf1 a include:servers.mcsv.net include:_spf.google.com ~all

However, if I do this, does it not end up being more than 10 lookups and therefore still exceeding the limitations of the protocol?

• 2 - initial TXT and SPF Record
• 1 - include:servers.mcsv.net
• 1 -_spf.google.com

include:servers.mcsv.net includes

• 1- servers.mcsv.net
• 1- spf1.mcsv.net
• 1- spf.mandrillapp.com

_spf.google.com includes:

• 1- _spf.google.com TXT
• 1- _netblocks.google.com TXT
• 1- _netblocks2.google.com TXT
• 1- _netblocks3.google.com TXT

Total 11 lookups.

Is there any other way around this?

Answer 1

Consolidation using include may always end up making too many DNS look-ups as the included domains may include others.

To see my approach on solving this issue, have a look at SPF-tools which reassembles the original SPF record and outputs only the ip4 and ip6 fields into the new one. Feel free to ask me any questions, I will gladly help/extend the documentation in the repository.