Hostinger Email SPF and DKIM setup

What you are setting up

Hostinger Email (its documentation also calls it Hostinger Mail) is the hosted-mailbox product bundled with Hostinger's web hosting plans and sold on its own. It is not the only mail product Hostinger sells: some accounts carry Titan Email or Google Workspace instead, and each of those has a different record set. The Emails section of hPanel tells you which one a domain has, and the rest of this guide is about Hostinger Email only. Its records never change per account: the same two MX hosts, the same SPF include, and the same three DKIM CNAME names for every customer, which makes the setup easy to check against this page. What varies is who publishes them. If your domain's nameservers point at Hostinger, hPanel does it in one click; if your DNS lives at Cloudflare, GoDaddy, or anywhere else, you type the same values there yourself.

Publish SPF and DKIM

In hPanel, go to Emails, click Mailboxes next to the domain, and open Domain settings in the left sidebar. When the domain uses Hostinger nameservers you will see Connect automatically; a modal warns that your DNS records will change, and clicking Yes, Proceed writes the MX, SPF, and DKIM records into your zone. When the button is missing, Hostinger's own diagnosis is that your nameservers point elsewhere, and you add the records at whichever provider answers for your domain. Either way, this is the complete set (hosts are relative to your domain, so @ is the apex and some editors want it left blank):

Type:  MX
Host:  @
Value: mx1.hostinger.com      Priority: 5

Type:  MX
Host:  @
Value: mx2.hostinger.com      Priority: 10

Type:  TXT     (SPF)
Host:  @
Value: v=spf1 include:_spf.mail.hostinger.com ~all

Type:  CNAME   (DKIM)
Host:  hostingermail-a._domainkey
Value: hostingermail-a.dkim.mail.hostinger.com

Type:  CNAME   (DKIM)
Host:  hostingermail-b._domainkey
Value: hostingermail-b.dkim.mail.hostinger.com

Type:  CNAME   (DKIM)
Host:  hostingermail-c._domainkey
Value: hostingermail-c.dkim.mail.hostinger.com

The DKIM records are CNAMEs, not TXT keys: Hostinger holds the public keys on its side and rotates among the three selectors, so you never paste a p= value and you never need to update these records. For a subdomain mailbox such as shop.yourdomain.com, put the label on every host (shop for the MX and SPF records, hostingermail-a._domainkey.shop for DKIM) and keep the values the same. The SPF include is heavier than it looks: when we resolved it, _spf.mail.hostinger.com pulled in relay.mail.hostinger.com and relay.mailchannels.net, so Hostinger Email costs three of your ten SPF lookups, and the record authorizes MailChannels servers to send for your domain alongside Hostinger's own. Hostinger's rule for domains that already have an SPF record is blunt: delete the old one and publish a single merged value, with its example reading v=spf1 include:_spf.mail.hostinger.com include:emailmktprovider.tld ~all.

There is also a Custom DKIM section on the same Mailboxes page, where Generate produces a TXT record you publish by hand. Hostinger says the button is grayed out until any DKIM records already in your zone are deleted, that the custom key and the default CNAMEs can then be enabled together without conflict, and that the status must read verified after propagation. The default CNAMEs are enough for DMARC; reach for Custom DKIM only when a policy on your side requires a key you generated.

Add DMARC

Hostinger's manual-setup table lists DMARC as “not mandatory for basic email operations” and “highly recommended,” and its automatic connect does not create it, so a domain that was set up in one click has no DMARC record until you add one. The record Hostinger shows is the standard starting point:

Type:  TXT
Host:  _dmarc
Value: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain.com

Build it with our DMARC builder and progress past p=none once your reports are clean. Alignment is not a concern here: mail from a Hostinger mailbox is signed with d=yourdomain.com under one of the three hostingermail selectors, and a mailbox normally uses your own address as its Return-Path as well, so DKIM aligns with the From address on every message and SPF aligns too, and the record can go to p=reject without touching this sender. A subdomain mailbox inherits the apex DMARC record, so you do not publish a second one for shop.

The Hostinger Email gotcha

Titan Email records are not Hostinger Email records, and Hostinger sells both. Titan uses mx1.titan.email and mx2.titan.email at priorities 10 and 20 with include:spf.titan.email, and older tutorials, forum answers, and even other Hostinger help articles describe that set. A domain that ends up with one Titan MX and one Hostinger MX, or with the Titan SPF include and the Hostinger DKIM CNAMEs, receives some mail and drops the rest, and Hostinger's own troubleshooting names mixed MX records as a cause of lost mail. Before you copy anything, open Emails in hPanel and read which product the domain actually has; the Domain settings page shows the records for that product and nothing else.

“Connect automatically” rewrites your zone. The modal says the records will change, and it means it: if the domain already had an SPF record for a marketing tool or an older host, you need to check afterward that you are left with one merged SPF record rather than two, because two records fail SPF outright. The reverse trap is quieter. When the nameservers are not Hostinger's, editing the zone inside hPanel does nothing at all, since no resolver reads it, and the Domain settings status stays disconnected while you wait. Confirm with a lookup which provider is authoritative before you type a single record, and allow up to 24 hours for the status to catch up after a change.

Confirm it worked

• Check Domain settings. Back in Emails > Mailboxes > Domain settings, the MX, SPF, and DKIM entries should each show as connected. Hostinger allows up to 24 hours for propagation, but a record that is still missing after that is almost always published at the wrong provider or with the domain appended twice to a _domainkey host.
• Send a real message and read the headers. Send from the Hostinger mailbox to an address you control and confirm the DKIM signature shows d=yourdomain.com with s=hostingermail-a, hostingermail-b, or hostingermail-c, and that the result is dmarc=pass. Our header analyzer reads it back plainly.
• Watch the reports. Hostinger Email appears in your DMARC aggregate reports as Hostinger or MailChannels infrastructure, aligned and passing on both SPF and DKIM. If it passes DKIM but fails SPF, the SPF record was overwritten or is one of two; if it fails both, the message left through Titan or another product with a different record set.