SPF, DKIM and DMARC, explained without the jargon

If your email lands in spam, these three records are usually why. Here's the plain-English version.

SPF — who is allowed to send

SPF is a DNS record listing which servers may send mail for your domain. Receiving servers check it. Keep it under 10 DNS lookups and end it with ~all (softfail) or -all (fail).

DKIM — proof it wasn't tampered with

DKIM adds a cryptographic signature to each message. The matching public key lives in DNS. If the signature verifies, the receiver knows the mail is really from you and wasn't altered.

DMARC — what to do when checks fail

DMARC ties SPF and DKIM together and tells receivers what to do with mail that fails: p=none (monitor), p=quarantine, or p=reject. Start at none, watch the reports, then tighten.

Check yours in 30 seconds

You don't have to guess — our free SPF, DMARC and blocklist tools inspect any domain and tell you exactly what to fix. No signup.