In this guide we will help you to understand what exactly a "TXT Record" is.
For more information on how to manage your DNS settings, please see our article on "How To Change DNS Settings."
What's a TXT Record?
A TXT record allows you to link a specific text with a specific zone within your domain, making it a resource record. With this record in place, your domain administrators can input any amount of text content into the DNS records for your domain, as required. There can be many reasons for this that your domain provider can explain.
One potential reason would be validating who has ownership of a domain name. To prove that you own a particular domain name, your provider will ask you to add a TXT record containing a certain value to your domain, thus proving it to be yours. Other uses might include DKIM records, which are used to validate emails that are being transmitted.
SPF records also pertain to emails, allowing only authorised hosts to send an email from a domain. All TXT records with content over 255 characters will usually be separated into quoted strings of 255 characters each. DKIM values are typically broken up like this. This is an automatic process established by the domain administrator who initially created the TXT record for your domain. This means you won't have to separate the content yourself and can input the text content as you normally would.
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