DuoCircle Launches Service that Automatically Flattens SPF Records
Quick Answer
DuoCircle launched AutoSPF in April 2019 to solve the SPF 10-lookup limit. SPF records cap total DNS lookups at ten, including nested includes. Once a domain exceeds that limit, SPF returns permerror at every receiver, and DMARC alignment for SPF silently breaks. Companies that add SaaS senders (CRM, marketing automation, helpdesk, transactional email) routinely exceed the limit without warning because SPF has no built-in error reporting. AutoSPF flattens the record by replacing nested domain includes with their resolved IP addresses, so the served record contains zero nested lookups regardless of how many services are referenced. The service deduplicates netblocks across includes, monitors source IPs every few minutes for changes, and alerts on include changes, all without requiring DNS modifications by the customer.
DuoCircle LLC is an integrated, cloud-based email solutions company. DuoCircle has launched AutoSPF, a service that helps companies avoid going over their DNS lookup limit by automatically flattening their SPF record. Going over the DNS lookup limited can keep emails from being delivered.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email authentication method used by email delivery services to prevent email spoofing. The problem is that SPF records limit the number of DNS lookups to just 10. Once that limit is exceeded, DNS lookups stop and email delivery starts to break down. Companies that use multiple service providers sending emails on their behalf can quickly exceed their DNS lookup limit. And since SPF comes with no error handling, there won’t be any warning that emails aren’t getting delivered.
Flattening is simply replacing all the domains in the SPF record with their IP addresses, which eliminates the need for DNS lookups altogether. AutoSPF Does the flattening automatically without any user intervention. In this manner AutoSPF always returns a flattened SPF record to public DNS queries.
“We process email for tens of thousands of domains and receive email from millions of different companies and it’s surprising how many SPF records are malformatted. We wanted to provide a service that would help solve this problem,” said Brad Slavin, CEO of DuoCircle.
To ensure users never go over their DNS limit, AutoSPF includes the following capabilities:
- Automatic flattening of all the domains in the include
- Deduplication of netblocks of all the domains in the include
- Checking for changes in the include every couple minutes
- Checking for changes in IP addresses of the service providers every couple minutes
- Sending an alert anytime they include has changed
AutoSPF is designed for growing business that don’t have the time to modify their DNS registrar in order to update it.
General Manager
General Manager at DuoCircle. Product strategy and commercial lead across the email security portfolio.
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