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TXT records with or without quotes

Posted on March 18, 2022

I’m trying to configure TXT records for email deliverability (SPF, DKIM, DMARC).

I’ve seen guides for Digital Ocean that put TXT records between quotes (“v=spf1 ip4:192.168.0.1 -all”) and without quotes (v=spf1 ip4:192.168.0.1 -all).

Should I use quotes or not? Or do they work exactly the same?

Thanks!

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alexdo

March 18, 2022

Hello there,

The quotes are needed, you can also check our existing tutorials on How To Create a SPF Record For Your Domain with Google Apps and How To use an SPF Record to Prevent Spoofing & Improve E-mail Reliability

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-an-spf-record-to-prevent-spoofing-improve-e-mail-reliability

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-spf-record-for-your-domain-with-google-apps

Hope that this helps!

Bobby

March 22, 2022

Hello,

In most cases, it should work fine either way, but I personally prefer to add the quotes anyway.

What I personally do is to send an email to the following website:

https://mail-tester.com

It then generates a report for you which you could use to check how the email looks to the recipient server and verify if there are any unexpected issues with your TXT records.

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