DMARC: no record published
Your domain has no DMARC record published. Receivers have no instructions on how to handle unauthenticated mail from your domain.
Without DMARC, receivers use their own heuristics. Gmail and Microsoft 365 increasingly require DMARC to accept mail at scale (Gmail's 2024 bulk sender rules). Not having DMARC is a growing deliverability liability.
What causes it
- You never set up DMARC. It's optional historically but required for bulk sending (>5000/day to Gmail) since Feb 2024.
- Your DMARC record was published on the wrong hostname — it must be at _dmarc.
, not the apex. - The record exists but has a syntax error that makes it invalid.
How to fix it
Step 1: Publish a monitoring-only DMARC record
Start with p=none, which does nothing to delivery but gives you reports. Publish this TXT record at _dmarc.
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain.com; fo=1;Step 2: Monitor for 2-4 weeks
DMARC aggregate reports (rua=) will arrive daily as XML. Parse them with a service like Postmark DMARC Digests, Valimail, or dmarcian. Look for which senders fail alignment.
Step 3: Fix alignment, then escalate
Once all legitimate senders are aligned, upgrade to p=quarantine. After a week with no issues, consider p=reject. Don't skip the staging.
Fixed it? Run a fresh test to confirm.
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