Shared VPS Dedicated WP Professional Plus
WP Enthusiast and WP Professional accounts must enable the Email Add On before using this tutorial.
SPF, or “Sender Policy Framework,” reduces the amount of junk mail you receive by preventing delivery of messages from forged sender addresses to your mailbox.
For more information about how SPF works, check out our What is an SPF Record? article.
Enabling SPF will affect all mailboxes on your account.
Blocking Junk Mail with SPF
Choose the tutorial that reflects your ACC interface type:
Not sure what the difference is? See Which ACC Interface Am I Using?
If you are using the Legacy interface:
- Log in to the Account Control Center (ACC) at my.pair.com
- Click E-Mail in the left sidebar
- Click Manage Junk E-Mail Filter Settings in the drop-down
- Under Sender Policy Framework (SPF), check the box next to Block messages that hard-fail SPF checks
If you are using the New ACC interface:
- Log in to the Account Control Center (ACC) at my.pair.com
- In the top navigation bar, click Email
- In the “Email Delivery Settings by Domain Name” section, find the domain name that your email uses and click the
cog icon
- Click the SPF Settings button
- Click the Activate SPF button
If you want SPF to automatically reject suspicious email, click the Change to hard fail button
When SPF checking is turned on, it will check incoming mail. There are three results for SPF checked mail:
- Success: Successful mail does not break any SPF rules and will continue on through the normal junk filtering checks before being delivered to your mailbox.
- Hard Fail: Mail that hard fails breaks one or more SPF rules and is blocked. It will not enter the server.
- Soft Fail: Mail that soft fails breaks one or more SPF rules, but is allowed to enter the server as Junk. It will be treated according to the Junk delivery rules for the account.
You can turn the SPF feature off by returning to the Manage Junk E-Mail Filter Settings and unchecking the box next to Block messages that hard-fail SPF checks.