SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for GoHighLevel: A Setup Guide

What each record does

Why all three, not just one

SPF and DKIM each cover one half of the trust question: who is allowed to send, and whether the message was tampered with on the way. DMARC ties them together and tells receivers what to do when a check fails, so a spoofed email gets rejected instead of slipping through. Gmail and Yahoo now require all three for bulk senders, so a partial setup counts as none in their eyes.

How to set them up for GoHighLevel

1. In GoHighLevel, start the email and domain setup for your sending domain so the platform shows you the exact records to add.
2. Open your domain's DNS settings at your registrar or DNS host, wherever you manage the domain.
3. Add the SPF record. If you already have one, merge the new source into it; never publish two SPF records on the same domain.
4. Add the DKIM record GoHighLevel provides, usually as a CNAME or TXT entry.
5. Add a DMARC record at _dmarc.yourdomain, starting with a monitoring policy so you can watch reports before you enforce.
6. Wait for DNS to propagate, then confirm all three pass with a checker before you send.

Start DMARC soft, then tighten

Publish DMARC with p=none first. That collects reports without affecting delivery, so you can confirm your real mail passes SPF and DKIM. Once it does, move to p=quarantine and then p=reject to actively block spoofed mail. Jumping straight to reject before your legitimate mail is aligned can send your own campaigns to spam.

Authentication is necessary, not sufficient

These records get your mail trusted as genuinely yours, but they do not make a dirty list deliverable. Authenticate the domain and verify the list, and you cover both halves of deliverability: provider trust and list quality.