I am having the following issues. I was getting spam notices for a few emails that were sent to yahoo. So I figured I should probably update to SPF and DKIM. Found out that there is a new Standard called DMARC. So I implemented that as well.
Now I am getting multiple Issues of Spam declined by Yahoo and Gmail. Here is where it starts to become interesting. Checked this on my personal email and send myself an Email to my Gmail. Checked the header and it failed for SPF & DKIM (DKIM not implemented). Funny I thought. So I opened up the Terminal and checked the dig _dmarc.domain.com -t TXT and here I am getting intermittent responses. Sometime .4MS sometimes nothing at all. First one goes through, all other ones do not.
So I am wondering if the lack of DNS Reply leads to the fact that I am getting “spam” checked because the DNS isn’t responding. Figured I should check here and see what you guys think. If there are not ideas here then I will take CF out of the equation and start with the basics and then start adding functionality one by one and see if it works again to ID where the problem came from.
Just to confirm, have you already set up DKIM in your email host itself? DKIM is a DNS record, but it also needs to be set up by the software sending the email.
Also I would recommend using a DMARC monitoring service, they can detect when and why your emails are failing without having to perform a manual test. Dmarcian is one, and there are others that provide the same functionality.
I have not included the DKIM because it is not supported by the hoster (IONOS - 1&1) anymore. They are now only doing SPF and DMARC. Therefore, the setting in the DMARC also only checks SPF and excludes the DKIM.
As for the service, we are small start up. So we send maybe 20-40 e-Mails a month. No need for such a service. And the one you supplied has a free instance for personal use, which is not the case here.
Hope that helps and answers the question in part at least.