: Do SPF and DKIM TXT records require quotes? I have been searching for some hours now, but multiple sources say different things. https://support.wordfly.com/hc/en-us/articles/204767474-How-do-we-publish-DKIM-and-SPF-in-our-DNS-

@Jamie184

In the (raw) DNS zone file, the value of a TXT record needs to be enclosed in double-quotes if it contains spaces (as is the case with SPF and DKIM records).

However, as mentioned in comments, you often use another tool to edit DNS records (you don't usually edit the DNS zone file directly, although WHM does give you this option). This other tool will probably handle the quotes and any additional escaping that is required to make the record valid. If you manually surround the value in quotes when submitting the value using your editor/tool then these additional quotes might be escaped and become part of the TXT record value.

Incidentally, when you do a DNS lookup, you are seeing the parsed/unquoted string value.

Reference: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TXT_Record https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1464

Vote Up Vote Down