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If Meta asks you to verify your domain
You'll come away knowing how to add the TXT record Meta uses to confirm your domain is yours without touching your email's SPF, and how to check from outside that both records coexist.
By Yodai · Published September 6, 2026 · Updated October 12, 2026
Time to add another row in your domain's DNS panel, but this one follows a different rule. Meta asks you to verify that your website's domain belongs to you, from your business account settings. It gives you a strange string and asks you to paste it into your DNS as a TXT record. You open your domain's panel and there's already a TXT record there: the one that authorizes your email provider to send on your behalf. And the question stops you cold: do you edit it, or add the new one alongside it?
If you edit it wrong, you won't notice right away. Meta marks the domain as verified, and everything looks fine. Then a week later you start noticing that emails to your customers are landing in spam, or not arriving at all. Nobody warns you the moment you make the mistake: the warning shows up only after the damage is done.
Two verifications that have nothing in common
Your WhatsApp phone number is verified by text or phone call: WhatsApp sends a six-digit code to that number, and you enter it wherever you're setting that number up. That has nothing to do with your DNS or your domain at all, it's strictly between WhatsApp and the phone.
The domain is verified separately, and you don't need it for your WhatsApp to work. It lets your Meta business account show up as the owner of your website: that way you control, for example, who can edit how links to your site look in posts and ads. That's where the TXT record comes in. Meta gives you a string like facebook-domain-verification= followed by a code. You can also verify with a file or a tag on your homepage, but if you choose the TXT option, that string goes into your domain's DNS as its own row, not inside another record.
An SPF TXT record only works if it's exactly that text: swapping it for something else wipes out the permission you gave your email to send on your behalf.
You add to it, you don't replace it
A single domain name can have several TXT records at once. That's not some quirk of whichever panel you use, it's just how DNS works. You can have one for your email's SPF, another for Meta's verification, and others for more services, and they coexist without stepping on each other as long as each one is its own row within the zone.
The one thing that can't happen is having two rows that both start with v=spf1. That's a real conflict, because the server receiving your email doesn't know which of the two SPF records to trust and treats it as invalid, so your SPF stops working. But Meta's code doesn't start with v=spf1, so it doesn't compete with your SPF for that reason: it only competes for the same spot if you edit the same row instead of creating a new one.
If your DNS panel is one of the older ones and only gives you a single text box per name, don't force both strings into the same field separated by a space: some resolvers concatenate them wrong, and you end up with an SPF record that doesn't say what you think it does. In that case, the real fix isn't a syntax trick: ask your registrar or DNS provider to let you create multiple TXT rows with the same name, or move your DNS management to one that does.
- This is what you need if the links you share or advertise point to sunbakery.com, with no subdomain.
- It coexists with your email's TXT record if you add it as a new row, never if you replace the one that was already there.
- It's where almost everyone does it, since the website and the email both usually live on the root domain.
- It only works if it's exactly the domain you need to verify: check Meta's screen to see which one it's asking for before you choose.
- It doesn't touch email at all, because it's a separate name with nothing on it yet.
- If your ads link to sunbakery.com and not the subdomain, verifying the subdomain won't do you any good for that purpose.
Which one do I choose: If what you're linking to is the website your customers already use, verify at the root and add the TXT record as a new row. Save the subdomain option for when that's exactly the domain you need to verify.
Double-check before you call it done
After you save, don't trust that the panel says "saved." Look up a DNS lookup tool, any TXT record checker will do, and check the domain from the outside, not from inside the panel itself. Both rows need to show up, the email one and Meta's, each complete and not cut off.
If you only see one, something got merged or overwritten when you saved. Go back to the panel, delete whatever ended up wrong, and create the two rows separately, not one on top of the other by editing the same field. And you don't have to wait hours to check: adding a new TXT row alongside one that already existed usually shows up within minutes. This isn't the big change of moving your whole website somewhere else.
- The domain verified in Meta with its own TXT record, without touching the one your email uses.
- You know a domain can have several TXT rows at once, and that the only real conflict is duplicating an SPF record.
- You've checked from the outside that both rows coexist, not just that the panel said "saved."
- You know when to verify at the root and when to verify on a subdomain, depending on where the links you share or advertise point.
- The payment button, if it's a payment link from your gateway, doesn't require anything in your DNS.
Test yourself
Answer before opening each one. If one gives you trouble, go back to the section that explains it.
1. Your domain already has an SPF TXT record with include:_spf.google.com, and Meta is asking you to add its verification string. Do you edit that TXT record or create a new one?
You create a new one with the same name. The SPF record stays untouched because a different TXT record that doesn't start with v=spf1 doesn't compete with it; editing it would wipe out your email's sending permission.
2. You're about to launch ads that link to sunbakery.com, and you're planning to verify wa.sunbakery.com so you don't touch the root. Will that work?
Not for that purpose. The verification has to match the domain that appears in the ad's link; if you're linking the root, you verify the root, even though the subdomain is free to use for something else.
3. You saved Meta's TXT record and the panel says "saved," but you haven't checked anything else. Can you consider the domain fully verified?
Not without checking it from the outside with a DNS lookup. If the panel merged the two rows into one, Meta won't find its string or your email will lose its SPF, and the "saved" message doesn't tell the two cases apart.
Both rows coexist, Meta's TXT and the email's SPF, each one intact. Next up is the payment button, and there the question isn't whether you'll break your email but whether the payment needs anything in your domain at all.
In Yodai you connect the domain you already have to your site, and it stays registered where it is, in your name. See how your own domain for your website works.
NextThe payment button lives on your website, and it almost never requires touching the domain.