✅ SPF
✅ DKIM
IONOS offers various email solutions, including webmail, email hosting, and email marketing tools, all designed to enhance communication and productivity.
Below are the steps of IONOS SPF and DKIM configurations which will help you make sure your IONOS emails can pass DMARC checks:
Set up SPF for IONOS
There are two scenarios here:
1. When you manage your domain’s DNS in IONOS and its your DNS provider
2. When your domain’s DNS provider is different from IONOS(e.g., Cloudflare, GoDaddy, etc.)
How to set up IONOS SPF if your domain’s DNS records are managed in IONOS hosting
Please note that in case your hosting provider is IONOS itself and your domain is managed in IONOS, IONOS SPF should be activated already by default.
However, if your emails fail SPF checks, it may be that the SPF record for IONOS SPF is somehow missing. In this case, please follow the steps below to add IONOS SPF record to your domain:
1. Navigate to the DNS settings of the domain in question(e.g., example.com) in your IONOS DNS zone
2. Click the “Add record” button
3. Find the “IONOS SPF (TXT)” in the list of suggested records and click on it
4. Click “Save”
Note: If an SPF TXT record already exists for your domain and it has other sending sources included in it, it is going to automatically be adjusted with the IONOS SPF include mechanism.
How to setup IONOS SPF when your domain’s DNS provider is different from IONOS(e.g., Cloudflare, GoDaddy, etc.)
In case you manage your domain’s DNS records in a DNS zone different from IONOS (e.g., Cloudflare) and you already have an SPF record, you will need to add IONOS SPF include mechanism to your domain’s SPF record. Please refer to the steps below to do so:
Note: In this guide, we’re going to show IONOS setup with the dmarc-test-11.online test domain and the example of DNS provider here is Cloudflare
Navigate to your DNS zone and add the following include mechanism to your SPF record:
include:_spf-us.ionos.com
So, if your domain’s existing SPF record is:
v=spf1 ip4:185.181.10.107 include:_spf.mlsend.com ~all
The updated one will be:
v=spf1 ip4:185.181.10.107 include:_spf.mlsend.com include:_spf-us.ionos.com ~all
In case you still don’t have an SPF record, please create the following record and publish in your DNS:
Record type: TXT
Record name: @
Record value: v=spf1 include:_spf-us.ionos.com ~all
Set up DKIM for IONOS
Just like SPF, with DKIM also there are two scenarios:
1. When IONOS is your hosting provider and you manage your domain’s DNS records in IONOS
How to set up IONOS DKIM if your domain’s DNS records are managed in IONOS hosting
If your domains are using IONOS name servers (which is the default setup), no further action is needed—DNS records required for DKIM signing are automatically configured for you.
However, if DKIM becomes deactivated for any reason, it’s recommended reactivating it to ensure proper email delivery.
For instance, if you’ve removed the DKIM records for an existing domain in your IONOS account, you can reactivate DKIM at any time. Simply add the following three CNAME records for your domain in your IONOS account:
- Navigate to the DNS settings of the domain in question(e.g., example.com) in your IONOS DNS zone
- Click Add record > CNAME
- Create the first CNAME record by taking the values for Hostname and Points to from the first line of the table above and entering them in the corresponding fields
- Click “Save”
How to setup IONOS DKIM when your domain’s DNS provider is different from IONOS(e.g., Cloudflare, GoDaddy, etc.)
In case your DNS provider is different from IONOS (e.g., you use Cloudflare), then you need to add the same 3 CNAME-type DKIM records to your DNS zone.
1. Navigate to the DNS zone of your domain >> Click “Add record”
2. Add the first record as provided in the table above by copying and pasting the names and values in the corresponding fields (make sure that the proxy status is turned off when adding CNAME records)
In case you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to EasyDMARC technical support.