SPF Records

Please note: These instructions are of a technical nature and are written for administrators who have the ability to alter their own DNS records (or have them altered).

In a nutshell, our iBex system sends out emails to customers for different reasons. The address these emails are sent from are whatever is entered in your operator/property pages. This can cause issues with some email clients as they may identify emails sent from our system as spoofs. In cases like Hotmail, they may prevent links in messages from being clicked (until approved).

To get around this a SPF record needs to be added to the DNS of the email. So if the emails are being sent from bob@example.com then you need to add the record to example.com’s DNS. This is something we cannot do for you, as we don’t have access to your DNS records. (For our CMS website customers whose DNS is run by us, we are able to set this up for you - just contact us to arrange).

This diagram created by Microsoft illustrates what happens with email SPF records.

spf_flow1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. The sender (Seekom) sends the email saying it’s from the address bob@example.com to jane@anothersite.net
  2. Jane’s email host (anotherserver.net) checks the email as it comes in. They see that the email says it’s from bob@example.com but realize that it’s really from mailer@a.long.server.address.for.seekom.com
    Jane’s server then looks up example.com’s SPF record
  3. If the lookup passes (the example.com record says Seekom is allowed to send email for them) then it’s marked as accepted. If the lookup fails, then the email may end up in the junk folder or labelled as spam/a spoof.

We use this method to send emails so customers can get their notifications from you directly. If they’re booking with myfancyhotel.com then they expect emails sent to them are from myfancyhotel.com and not seekom.com (or our server address).

To prevent your customers from receiving warnings you need to add a SPF record. (This can either be a TXT record or a SPF record, depending on what your host provides). If you’re unable to add either kind of record to your host, please contact them for assistance.

 

iBex's SPF Record

Mail from iBex can come from a few different servers. To make this easier, you will need to include our own SPF rules.

The SPF record you need should look like the following:

"v=spf1 include:spf.ibexres.com ~all"

Note: We use ~all as it indicates “there may be other servers that send email as us which are not listed” while -all means “these are the only allowed servers”.

Your own Domain

If you know what server(s) your own emails are sent from, you can add them as well. For example, if I use smtp.example.com to send my emails my record would look like the following:

"v=spf1 mx a:smtp.example.com include:spf.ibexres.com ~all"

Additional Information

We don’t provide support for adding SPF records, that’s something you need to contact your DNS provider for (for our own hosted websites you’ll need to raise a ticket with us) assistance with.

You can read up about SPF records at the following sites: