Publish a DMARC record

Add a monitoring DMARC policy and start collecting reports.

15 min

why this matters

DMARC ties SPF and DKIM to the address your recipients actually see, and Gmail and Yahoo require it from bulk senders. Without it, your mail is throttled and anyone can spoof your domain.

Step by step

1
Get SPF and DKIM working first
DMARC only passes when one of them passes and is aligned with your visible From domain. Publishing DMARC before those are in place will not help.
2
Publish a monitor-only record
Add a TXT record on the _dmarc subdomain. p=none changes nothing about delivery — it just starts the reports flowing.
```
Type: TXT
Name: _dmarc
Value: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@example.com; fo=1
```
3
Read the reports
Aggregate reports arrive as daily XML attachments. Feed them into a free DMARC report viewer so you can see which senders pass and which fail.
4
Tighten the policy
After a couple of clean weeks, follow the enforcement guide to move to quarantine and then reject.