B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
53.6%
53.6% -- share of spf domains using softfail for SPF-enabled domains (2026)
53.6% of SPF-enabled domains still use softfail instead of hardfail according to the SPF Supply Chain 2026 study.
Attribution:
View source
Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
·
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
53.6%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2026
Entity
Geography
Global
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
75
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
DMARCguard
Primary
Tier B
https://dmarcguard.io/tools/spf-checker/ ↗
Source Article
SPF Record Check: Validate Syntax, Catch Errors | DMARCguard
SPF Record Checker
Free SPF checker. Validate your SPF record against RFC 7208, parse every mechanism, count its DNS lookups, and catch PermError before receivers do. No signup.
What is SPF?
Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication protocol defined in RFC 7208. It allows domain owner…
Original Research
DMARCguard
· Original study ↗
Methodology
SPF Supply Chain 2026 study by DMARCguard; methodology not detailed
Methodology documented
Segmentation
IndustryEmail Marketing
RegionGlobal
RoleAll marketers
Channelemail
Cite this stat
Plain Text
SPF-enabled domains: 53.6% share of spf domains using softfail. Source: DMARCguard (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/spf-domains-softfail-2026
HTML Embed
<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/spf-domains-softfail-2026" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>53.6%</strong> -- share of spf domains using softfail for SPF-enabled domains<br><small>Source: DMARCguard (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/spf-domains-softfail-2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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