How to set up SPF DNS Record for a domain name?

Question

I am bit confused with setting up SPF DNS Record. I followed what others suggested on their website as a solution. After setting up SPF TXT DNS Record and waiting for sometime, I tested my domain name for SPF Record on the website MXToolBox, but it keeps reporting SPF DNS Record not found. However, without WWW for my domain, MXToolBox website reports SPF DNS Record is found. Have a look at the images in the bottom. I hope someone could explain to me why this is.

SPF TXT Record

MXToolBox Website Result with and without www for our domain.

But if you go to MXToolBox overall summery page for your domain, it says You have no SPF TXT Record at all.

Answer 1

I think there's a small amount of confusion here. You show the results from looking up www.rel-tek.com , and indeed that does not have an SPF record, which is correct. I expect that mxtoolbox may be seeing an old version of your DNS.

When I check SPF for your bare domain, it succeeds, just as you've configured it:

# dig +short txt rel-tek.com                                                                                                          
"v=spf1 mx ip4:96.236.199.65 ~all"

You should not expect your www host to have an SPF record, nor should it have an mx of its own.

One tip: when you make changes to your DNS, reduce the TTL to say 300 (5 minutes). This makes it much easier to see changes, and stops bad settings from sticking around in caches for too long, letting you fix mistakes more easily. If you use dig on a command line (install the dnsutils package on Debian linuxen), you can tell it to target your home name server so you can bypass all the secondary caches and see what your real DNS is serving, so for you you might say:

dig +short txt @ns75.worldnic.com rel-tek.com