SPF

When an email claiming to be from you arrives, Gmail checks your SPF record. Is the sending server on your approved list? If it’s not, the email is treated as suspicious — and usually filed as spam.

Here’s the catch most people miss: it’s not just your email provider that needs listing. Any tool that sends email on your behalf — Mailchimp, Xero, your booking system — needs to be in your SPF record too. I see this one constantly: someone sets up Google Workspace correctly, adds Mailchimp six months later, and wonders why their newsletters vanish.

One more trap — you can only have one SPF record per domain. Some hosts add their own automatically. Add a second for Google Workspace and both break.

Check yours: run your domain through MXToolbox. Free, takes 30 seconds. SPF works alongside DKIM and DMARC — you want all three.