Namecheap SPF record setup for SparkPost not working

Question

I'm having trouble getting SparkPost SPF record setup correctly with my Namecheap domain.

I have the type set as TXT, host set as @, and the value set as v=spf1 include:sparkpostmail.com ~all and TTL set to 1min for quick testing and my TXT record but it still wont work. The TXT record is not propagating using this website to test. https://www.whatsmydns.net/#TXT

In namecheap, I have tried setting my "MAIL SETTINGS" to "email forwarding", no email service, and private email, cause I wasn't sure which mail settings to use either.

Answer 1

Turns out my problem was I had a CNAME record for the @ root domain.

From Support:

In case you have a CNAME record configured for @ (root domain), email will not work technically. The CNAME has the highest priority and suppresses all other records for the hostname (including MX Records which are responsible for mail delivery). The main difference between CNAME and ALIAS records is that the ALIAS record does not suppress A, MX, TXT, CAA records for the same host, unlike the CNAME record. In this case, I advise you to change the host type from CNAME @ xxx.herokudns.com. to ALIAS @ xxx.herokudns.com.

Looking at the heroku docs, it also apears they recommend using the ALIAS for namecheap.