Symptoms
-
Unable to receive an email message from an external domain
example.comto a domain hosted in Plesk with the following message in/var/log/maillogfile:vps postfix/cleanup[13378]: 05E831D9B: milter-reject: END-OF-MESSAGE from mail.example.com[203.0.113.2]: 5.7.23 SPF validation failed.; [email protected] [email protected]
-
SPF checking mode in Plesk > Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings is set to Reject mail when SPF does not resolve to "pass".
Cause
The SPF check for example.com fails because of an incorrect or nonexistent SPF record on the sender side.
Resolution
Ask the sender to correct the SPF settings for his domain or apply one of the following workarounds:
Change SPF checking mode
- Log in to Plesk.
- Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings.
- Change SPF checking mode to less strict, for example, "Only create Received-SPF headers, never block".
- Scroll down and press the OK button to apply the changes.
Add the sender domain to the exceptions
- Log in to Plesk.
- Go to Tools & Settings > Mail Server Settings.
- Add
example.comto SPF local rules and SPF guess rules fields as described here.
with