Why Emails Are Going to Spam and How to Fix It (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)

If your emails are landing in recipients’ spam folders, missing authentication records are the most common cause. These three DNS-based standards let receiving mail servers verify that a message genuinely came from your domain.

SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

An SPF record is a TXT record listing which mail servers are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain. Without one, receiving servers have no way to tell your legitimate mail server apart from a spammer forging your domain — and increasingly, they’ll assume the worst.

A typical cPanel-hosted domain’s SPF record looks like: v=spf1 +a +mx include:_spf.dozehost.com ~all

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)

DKIM adds a digital signature to outgoing messages, generated from a private key on the server and verified against a public key published in DNS. This proves the message wasn’t altered in transit and genuinely originated from a server authorized to sign for your domain. cPanel generates and manages DKIM automatically for hosted mailboxes under Email > Authentication.

DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication)

DMARC ties SPF and DKIM together and tells receiving servers what to do if a message fails both checks — quarantine it, reject it outright, or just monitor and report. It also enables reporting, so you can see who’s sending email (legitimately or not) claiming to be your domain.

Checking and fixing your setup

1. In cPanel, go to Email > Authentication and confirm SPF, DKIM and DMARC all show as enabled/valid for your domain.
2. If any show as missing, cPanel provides an “Install the missing/suggested record” button that adds the correct DNS entry automatically.
3. After adding or changing a record, allow time for DNS propagation, then send a test email to a service like mail-tester.com to confirm all three pass.

Getting all three configured correctly is the single biggest lever for inbox placement — more so than almost anything about the message content itself.