Email forwarding error: SPF status "fail"

General Email Routing
1

I have enabled email forwarding on my domain and generally it’s working fine.

So far I’ve had one forwarding error:

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The above shows one forwarded fine, the other not forwarded.

The reason for the failure is “SPF status: fail”.

But both of these emails are for the same domain, and same recipient. So the email routing and DNS entries are the same for both. So why does one fail SPF and the other doesn’t?

I have the following TXT entry in the DNS for the SPF, and there are no errors or warnings in the dashboard telling me any of my config is incorrect:

v=spf1 include:_spf.mail.hostinger.com include:_spf.mx.Cloudflare.net ~all

I need SPF for both hostinger and Cloudflare because I am using hostinger’s SMTP server to send email from my gmail client.

It’s working fine in general… just this one failure.

2

Are you saying that the email in the screenshot was one you sent?

If not, your SPF has nothing to do with this. It’s saying the sender failed the SPF for the domain they are sending from.

3

@KianNH thanks for your reply.

Are you saying that the email in the screenshot was one you sent?

This is on the Email Routing page, so each line relates to a received email from a Sender that is forwarded by Cloudflare to the relevant Custom address… these are the column headings:

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your SPF has nothing to do with this. It’s saying the sender failed the SPF for the domain they are sending from.

So that’s the case here? Of course, there needs to be a valid SPF in the DNS for Cloudflare to enable it to send (forward) the email to my chosen destination, so it’s not saying that the SPF for this is incorrect? It’s the actual sender that has an invalid SPF?