I have a droplet with LAMP stack installed. Using Plesk, I have managed to host 10 domains successfully. Let’s say my host name is set as “myHost.local” so DigitalOcean provides me a rDNS record for that (which I don’t have access). Then I have 10 domains hosted as domain1.com , domain2.com , …, domain 10.com all with their own DNS, SSL, email and everything set properly and functioning smoothly. Now, the problem is that when I want to set an SPF record for my emails, it will technically look like this: “v=spf1 +a +mx +a:myHost.local include:some3rdparty.eu -all” Since there is no A record for that host name in every domain’s DNS records, all the emails that I send end up in recipient’s spam folder or get rejected. If I change the a: identifier to my domain name, then there will be a rDNS mismatch and spamming again. I even tried to set in in include: identifier and got the same result. If I change the host name to match my domain name, then I can fix it for only one of the domains and the problem remains for the rest. Can anyone help me to set this up please? I feel very frustrated. :(Thanks in advance!

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Question

SPF record is not matching rDNS for multiple domains on a single droplet

Posted on January 22, 2020

Ubuntu 18.04

DNS

By lniab

I have a droplet with LAMP stack installed. Using Plesk, I have managed to host 10 domains successfully.

Let’s say my host name is set as “myHost.local” so DigitalOcean provides me a rDNS record for that (which I don’t have access). Then I have 10 domains hosted as domain1.com, domain2.com, …, domain 10.com all with their own DNS, SSL, email and everything set properly and functioning smoothly.

Now, the problem is that when I want to set an SPF record for my emails, it will technically look like this:

“v=spf1 +a +mx +a:myHost.local include:some3rdparty.eu -all”

Since there is no A record for that host name in every domain’s DNS records, all the emails that I send end up in recipient’s spam folder or get rejected.
If I change the a: identifier to my domain name, then there will be a rDNS mismatch and spamming again. I even tried to set in in include: identifier and got the same result.
If I change the host name to match my domain name, then I can fix it for only one of the domains and the problem remains for the rest.

Can anyone help me to set this up please? I feel very frustrated. :( Thanks in advance!

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alexdo

January 27, 2020

Hello, @lniab

Looking at the screenshot it’s says that the reverse DNS is not a valid hostname. Could you please check on this one and make sure that the droplet has a real domain/subdomain set for a hostname. - mail.yourdomain.se is pointed to your droplet.

Regards, Alex

lniab

January 27, 2020

Yes! Both positive and that is why I don’t know what would be the issue now.

alexdo

January 22, 2020

Hello, @lniab

Have you tried to set the SPF record using the IPv4 address of your droplet instead of using the droplet’s hostname? I believe this should work just fine. You can try this using the following syntax: