Custom email routing is displayed as invalid but works

Website, Application, Performance
1

I’ve set up a custom email forward route and it works perfectly.

To be able to use the SMTP server of Ionos I’ve added a SPF (TXT) record to my DNS entries.

But although I’ve set up the email routing system as suggested I get a warning in my Cloudflare panel that my email routing is disabled and that I should add the s_pf record of Cloudflare.

But as I don’t use the SMTP server of Cloudflare the s_pf record would be worthless.

My question is:
Could you respect correctly set up s_pf records that does not mention the Cloudflare record?
It’s misleading to read that a system is not working but it is working.

Just for your info: I’ve used s_pf to avoid creating links. :slight_smile:

Thank you for your time.

Thomas

4

Here is a screen shot of the panel:

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image877×224 8.79 KB

5

Cloudflare doesn’t have SMTP servers that are publicly accessible so I do not believe this assessment is entirely accurate.

The SPF values are needed to correctly “authenticate” the forwarded email since it’s now coming from Cloudflare instead of from its real destination. Some mail servers may not care the SPF does not pass, but others will and forwarding to those will not work hence the warning.

Perhaps it should instead say that it MAY NOT work instead of that is DISABLED, would that be a fair assessment of the query?

6

Thank you for your suggestion.

As far as I understood this security system, another mail server - e. g. Gmail - checks from which server the e-mail is sent from.

In my example I use a SMTP server of Ionos.

So the Gmail mail server checks the SP_F record where I mention the ionos mail server so the e-mail is “authenticated”.

It would be really great if the dashboard mentions that - as you suggested - the email routing MAY not work.

Thank you for your time!