?all
The SPF ending that returns neutral for unlisted IP addresses, meaning the domain makes no statement either way about whether they may send.
What it means
?all states explicitly what a record with no ending implies: the listed sources pass, and about everyone else the domain says nothing. RFC 7208 requires receivers to treat neutral exactly like none, so ?all offers no protection against spoofing from unlisted addresses.
Two uses make sense. One is a short testing period, when a domain wants listed senders to pass while it finds the rest. The other is a domain whose users legitimately send from anywhere and that relies on DKIM instead.
Microsoft's composite authentication counts a failure under a weak policy (~all, ?all or DMARC p=none) as an implicit failure rather than an explicit one, which shows how receivers weigh it.
Example
v=spf1 include:_spf.example.net ?allRelated terms
On this site
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- RFC 7208: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), section 8.2rfc-editor.org
- RFC 7208: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), section 4.7rfc-editor.org
- Microsoft Learn: Anti-spam message headers in Microsoft 365learn.microsoft.com
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes