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You likely already know that you need to set up a DMARC record.
DMARC protects your domain against spam and phishing emails, safeguarding your sender reputation.
But are you reading the DMARC reports you receive?
Let’s be honest: most of us don’t read ‘raw’ DMARC reports. Even though we know that the reports are packed with helpful information, they are super technical. Many people simply ignore them.
To get the full benefits of DMARC protection, you need an easy way to understand your DMARC reports. You need to know if there are changes to the emails that are being sent from your domain, and you need that information before your sender reputation is damaged.
What Is a DMARC Monitoring Tool? (And Why You Need One!)
All domain owners should use a free DMARC monitoring tool to convert raw DMARC reports into actionable insights.
A DMARC monitoring tool will:
- Reformat the raw data in an email digest or an online dashboard that you can understand
- Allow you to create alerts about suspicious changes, such as a new IP address sending email from your domain
- Make proactive monitoring easy and quick so that it’s less of a hassle.
I tested 7 tools that allow you to monitor DMARC reports for free.
Here’s how they stack up.
7 Free DMARC Monitoring Tools – Tried and Tested
DMARC is an important factor in email authentication, so having the right monitoring service is important. Testing monitoring services can take a while, so to save you some time, I tested all of these tools myself.
During testing, I wanted to find out:
- How easy it was to set up the new DMARC record for the monitoring tool
- What features were included for free
- How many emails I could monitor in a month
- Whether the limits were adequate for a typical small business website.
While some tools offer advanced features like API access, we’ll skip over that and stick to the basics.
Let’s start with the quickest and simplest tool on the list.
Postmark Free DMARC Monitor
Postmark’s DMARC monitoring service converts your technical DMARC reports into attractive email digests.
You don’t have to be a Postmark customer to use it for free. The DMARC monitoring tool is completely separate from Postmark’s email API and SMTP services.
I signed up for the free DMARC monitor using one of my own domains. It was the fastest and easiest to sign up for.
Just specify your domain, add the DMARC record, and you’re done.
There are a couple of downsides, though:
- There is no dashboard. The reports are email-only. That means you only get a snapshot of your DMARC issues once a week, but no visibility between reports. For small domains without much email traffic, that’s probably fine. But you should be aware of the fact that there’s no way to log in and see what’s happening in ‘real time’.
- Setup was a little risky because Postmark prompted me to add a new DMARC record to my DNS without checking whether I already had one. And while Postmark validated my new DMARC record by scanning my domain’s DNS records, it didn’t pick up on the fact that I had two DMARC records then either. Having two DMARC records will invalidate both of them.
You can check our DMARC record example if you run into this problem. Ideally, you’d merge the existing record with the new one, but it depends on the reporting rules you’ve set up already.
This isn’t a deal-breaker. It’s just something to be aware of if you have a DMARC record already.
Despite the hiccup, Postmark’s free DMARC monitor is still a good choice for small businesses. The reports are nicely laid out and easy to read, and they’re definitely an improvement on the default report format.
Pros
- Free
- Reports are attractive and easy to understand
- Instant setup – just add the DMARC record provided.
Cons
- No web interface
- No alerts
- Care needed during setup if you have a DMARC record already.
Pricing: Free. Paid plans start at $14 per month per domain for their premium product, DMARC Digests, which includes a dashboard and data retention.
Try Postmark’s free DMARC Monitor
EasyDMARC
EasyDMARC offers a range of email deliverability tools, including a free DMARC monitor.
I tested out the DMARC monitoring tool with the same domain I tried in Postmark.
This time, setting up my domain was really easy. EasyDMARC scanned my DNS and found my existing DMARC record. It prompted me to remove the record before adding a new one, which was a great sign.
There’s a bonus for Cloudflare users, too. If your domain’s DNS is managed in Cloudflare, you don’t even need to add a record. Easy DMARC has an integration that lets you set up the record in a single click.
EasyDMARC has an attractive dashboard and a suite of helpful tools to monitor email deliverability. It instantly showed me that my DMARC and SPF records are compliant, and it also shows the SPF and DMARC pass rates.
Keep in mind that EasyDMARC will analyze aggregate reports, but not failure (forensic) reports. In simple terms, that means it’ll provide a good overview of emails that are sent, but you can’t dive into details about individual messages that failed DMARC checks.
Logs are retained for 14 days, which is probably enough if you’re prepared to check in weekly.
The free DMARC monitor is limited to 1,000 emails per month, which is a pretty low limit. Remember: you’ll want to count all the emails sent from your domain to see if this is enough, so you’ll need to think about things like:
- Regular emails
- Contact form notifications from your website
- Email newsletters sent from your domain
- Store receipts if you’re using an e-commerce platform
- Invoices from cloud accounting tools
- And so on.
If you have a small website without any e-commerce features, you should be OK with the free plan and the 1,000 email limit. If you have a store or a newsletter, you will reach that limit pretty quickly.
Another service with a higher limit might be a better fit for your business.
Pros
- Good setup wizard
- Automatic DMARC setup via Cloudflare
- Attractive dashboard
Cons
- Limited to a maximum of 1,000 emails per month
- No failure (forensic) reporting
- No support
Pricing: Free. Paid plans start from $35.99/ month, billed annually.
Try EasyDMARC’s free DMARC monitor
Valimail
Valimail offers a free tool that provides basic DMARC monitoring. You may have learned about it from Mailchimp. Since Google and Yahoo tightened up their requirements for DMARC, Mailchimp started to recommend Valimail to monitor email deliverability.
There are no limits on the number of emails you can receive and analyze in Valimail. That is a huge bonus for high-volume senders like email marketers and busy online stores.
Setup is also very easy. Valimail completed a scan of my DNS when I signed up. Then it provided a new DMARC record that included everything I already had, but added Valimail to the rua section. That meant I could update the rule quickly without disrupting the other DMARC monitoring services I’d set up.
Once your domain is verified, you can send test emails from your domain to Valimail. This will analyze the email to ensure it passes email authentication checks. In other words, the dashboard clearly shows the status of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
You can also set up custom alerts so you’re aware of any suspicious email sending activity.
The downside is the reporting in the dashboard which I found a little confusing. For example, there was a delay of about 24 hours between the DMARC report being ‘available’ and the data being visible in the charts. The documentation is also on the technical side and didn’t answer all my questions, so I would be a little concerned about seeing an issue that I wasn’t able to solve on my own.
Pros
- Easy setup
- Unlimited emails
- DMARC alerts
Cons
- Dashboard can be unintuitive
- No pricing advertised on the site
Pricing: Free. No pricing available for paid plans. Contact the sales team for more information.
Try Valimail’s free DMARC monitoring service.
PowerDMARC
PowerDMARC’s free plan is available for ‘personal, non-commercial use’. So it’s suitable for something like a portfolio website or a family project, but it isn’t going to work for a business.
That said, there’s capacity for up to 10,000 emails per month.
If you have a busy community or a forum that you set up just for fun, PowerDMARC might be a really good fit for your site.
I found the Setup Wizard to be a bit awkward compared to the others. Instead of giving you a DMARC record immediately just to get you started, you have to generate your own.
That means you need to know what the various components of a DMARC record do in order to select the right options. Many people will probably struggle here, and I feel like the tooltips could be improved to guide you along.
In general, I think PowerDMARC could do more to make setup easier for beginners. Providing a default record would be a better approach.
Once you’re set up, the dashboard is fine. It’s a little less intuitive than some of the other tools I tested, but it does the job. Logs are also only retained for 10 days, so you’ll have to review them quite quickly to keep an eye on your sending reputation.
For non-commercial sites, a few compromises will be worth it just to get the high 10,000 email limit for DMARC monitoring. On the plus side, the paid plans are not too expensive if you want to use PowerDMARC for your business site instead.
Pros
- Generous limit: up to 10,000 emails
- Helpful, free deliverability tools
- Unlimited subdomains included
Cons
- Setup could be easier
- Non-commercial use only
- Only 10 days’ history
Pricing: Free. Paid plans start from $8/ month.
Try PowerDMARC’s free DMARC monitor
DMARC Advisor
DMARC Advisor offers a free DMARC Manager plan. It’s available to users located in Europe and Africa.
The free plan is restricted to personal use and allows you to add 2 domains. You can park unlimited ‘inactive’ domains, which means you can register domains that aren’t used to send emails, just to keep an eye on the sending activity.
Data is retained for 1 month. Forensic reporting isn’t included on the free plan.
I found that verifying my domain took a few hours with DMARC Advisor. There didn’t seem to be a way to force the service to re-check my DNS records. Once it caught up, the service worked well and would be perfect for a busy non-commercial site. (Update: I was told that there is indeed a way to force a refresh using the three dots in front of the domain).
While this service looks a lot like Dmarcian (see further down below), the limit of up to 10,000 emails per month is more generous. It’s also important to note that DMARC advisor only counts ‘DMARC capable’ emails against your limit. That means if someone sends spam emails from your domain, DMARC Advisor won’t penalize you for it.
Pros
- Monitor 2 domains for free
- Generous 10,000 email per month limit
- Add unlimited inactive (parked) domains
Cons
- Non-commercial use only
- No forensic reporting on the free plan
- Not available outside Europe and Africa
Pricing: Free for personal use. Paid plans start at $24/ month, billed annually.
Try free DMARC monitoring at DMARC Advisor
Dmarcian
Dmarcian’s DMARC reporting was the most mature of all the services I tested.
Its free plan is ideal for personal or non-commercial use. It allows you to monitor 2 domains in the same account and retains data for a month. That’s a longer period than the other tools I tested.
The onboarding and setup is super smooth and it’s very easy to understand what you need to do. Every step in the setup process was explained in plain language with actionable advice.
The dashboard view is clean, spacious, and easy to navigate too. I snapped the screenshot right after I completed setup, and it was easy to see the status of DMARC, SPF, and DKIM at a glance.
Once you’re fully set up in Dmarcian, you’ll notice that the alerting functionality is extremely comprehensive. If you need help with anything, the documentation is also easy to follow and written with beginners in mind.
Like EasyDMARC, Dmarcian won’t provide forensic reports on the free plan. It’s limited to a maximum of 1,250 emails per month, which is on the low side.
However, for a hobby site or a personal project, this is the best tool I tried.
Pros
- Monitor 2 domains for free
- Clear, simple dashboard
- Excellent alerting features
Cons
- Non-commercial use only
- No forensic reporting on the free plan
Pricing: Free for personal use. Paid plans start at $24/ month, billed annually.
Try Dmarcian’s free DMARC monitoring plan
Cloudflare Free DMARC Management Tool
If you’re already using Cloudflare to handle your DNS, Cloudflare’s free DMARC management tool is one to consider.
DMARC management is available on all Cloudflare plans, including the free version.
Having DMARC monitoring in the same place as your DNS makes perfect sense – and getting set up couldn’t be easier. Cloudflare generates the DNS record for you and you can add it to your DNS with one click.
If you already have a DMARC record, it will detect it for you. It’ll then generate a new record with a new rua section appended to it. This is ideal because preserves your existing settings.
Cloudflare doesn’t appear to limit the number of emails it analyzes. That’s good news for busy sites. The only downside we spotted is that subdomains aren’t supported and that the reporting is pretty basic.
If you’re not already with Cloudflare, moving your DNS is easy. It requires a couple of changes to your domain name settings. And Cloudflare’s free plan offers a ton of other benefits, like DDoS protection.
Pros
- Free for all your domains on Cloudflare
- Instant setup – just add the DMARC record provided
- No sending limits.
Cons
- Very basic information
- No subdomain support
- You’ll need to move your DNS management to Cloudflare.
Pricing: Free.
Try Cloudflare's free DMARC Management Tool
Next Step: Authenticate Your Domain Today
If someone starts to send spam or phishing emails from your domain, it can destroy your sender reputation overnight. Recovery is challenging, and sometimes impossible.
That’s why you need to pay close attention to DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records. These three records work together to secure your domain against malicious activity that can harm your business and your customers.
For complete peace of mind, our email authentication setup service makes it easy to get your DNS records set up and verified. Our technical team will handle the entire process for you, and we’ll ensure that all 3 records are working correctly.
Don’t leave your domain open to attack. Leave a comment below if you have any questions!
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29 Oct 2024 – Cloudflare added
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