Recurring loop problem with spf record

Technical Help
1

My SPF record is below, along with the errors im getting in the dmarcian spf testing…

I don’t know why its looking up so many IP addresses for my domain? It is on cloudflare, not sure that should effect the loop in SPF when i have the IP address set for the server?

I am trying to correct the problem below, please any advice is appreciated!!

v=spf1 a mx include:natural-sciatic-relief.com ip4:209.133.209.251 ~all

  • ERROR 153 DNS lookups required to evaluate the SPF record. The maximum is 10.
  • ERROR Too many include mechanisms / redirect modifiers encountered. The SPF Surveyor can process a maximum of 50.
2

I’m not sure if the site you’re having trouble with is the “natural-sciatic-relief.com” that appears in the SPF record you posted, but if it is then there are a couple of issues I can see with the current SPF record including it appears that you have included the “v=spf1” portion of the record twice and there is an extra “include:” modifier without any reference of what to include.

https://dmarcian.com/spf-survey/?domain=natural-sciatic-relief.com

The record currently reads

v=spf1 a mx include:natural-sciatic-relief.com include: ip4:209.133.209.251 v=spf1 include:_spf.mailerlite.com ~all

It should read more like:

v=spf1 a mx include:natural-sciatic-relief.com ip4:209.133.209.251 include:_spf.mailerlite.com ~all

Without knowing the full background of this website, I also suspect that it is not necessary to include the line “include:natural-sciatic-relief.com” -I think this is causing your looping problem.

In the end, the record likely should read more like this:

v=spf1 a mx ip4:209.133.209.251 include:_spf.mailerlite.com ~all

Best wishes!

1 Like
3

As eric already pointed out, you can’t have “include:natural-sciatic-relief.com” in the SPF record for the “natural-sciatic-relief.com” domain. That is a recursive reference.

Next issue - there’s no associated SPF record for _spf.mailerlite.com, so that will fail as well.

Looking at SPF record for mailerlite.com suggest that the correct include could be “_spf.mailerlite.io”:
$ dig txt mailerlite.com +short
"v=spf1 include:_spf.mailerlite.io include:_spf.google.com include:_spf.mlsend.com include:_spf.mailersendapp.com include:helpscoutemail.com ip4:46.101.232.166 ip4:185.79.247.75 ~all"

I suggest this SPF record:
"v=spf1 include:_spf.mailerlite.io a:natural-sciatic-relief.com ip4:209.133.209.251 mx -all"

Note that the mechanisms should be order after volume, so that the most used mechanism (i.e. highest mail volume) should appear first in the record.