DNS TXT RECORDS & DKIM: quotes or no quotes?

#1

I read and understood this note about DKIM:
“If your DKIM isn’t working and you notice that your record has a double set of quotation marks at the beginning and end, with extra slashes as well, your DNS provider may require you to remove the quotations at the beginning and end before pasting it in their editor.”

I kept the quotes and din’t get a double set of quotation.
Is the same true for DNS TXT Records?

#2

This is always a slightly difficult one because I don’t know what to expect from all DNS providers. As far as I know you should be able to not use the quotes and the DNS provider should add them, however I’m not confident that is always true. The only provider I’ve identified where pasting the quotes results in a double quote is CloudFlare, but I suspect there may be others on that front as well.

You can test the records to make sure they don’t have a double quote like this:

Note that my result there starts with:

"v=DKIM1

But in the cases where I’ve seen it add a double quote, it looked more like:

"\"v=DKIM1

#7

Well, that’s right.
Just got 10/10!
Thanks.

#3

That’s strange.
At cPanel, both TXT records look clean with a single quote (as I entered them) but when checking with the above link I get ""v=DKIM1…

The point is that it works as is and mail is sent out correctly - this is the first domain I successfully configured and without much pain - and I wonder whether I should simply leave as is or remove the quotes? What do you think?

#4

You might try using mail-tester.com to check how the email looks to the recipient server. It’ll tell you if the DKIM signatures look solid.

#5

I got a 5.9/10 score mainly because of that:

|-0.1|DKIM_SIGNED|Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid

This rule is automatically applied if your email contains a DKIM signature but other positive rules will also be added if your DKIM signature is valid. See immediately below.
-0.01
Have a look at our DKIM test below to know why, this may be a false-positive

Your DKIM signature is not valid -4 points!

I presume I should remove quotes, right?

#6

I think so, that’ll probably fix it. I’d wait a couple hours after doing that, before testing again.