Reference

Free DMARC monitoring: what you can get without paying, and where free stops

The free tiers at Postmark, dmarcian, Sendmarc and Valimail with their stated limits, what a free DNS check shows, and what DemiSignal Starter adds.

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On this page
  1. Three things free DMARC monitoring can mean
  2. Free tiers that process your reports
  3. What a free DNS check shows, and what it cannot
  4. Where free stops
  5. What DemiSignal gives away, and what Starter adds
  6. Sources

Postmark (opens in a new tab), dmarcian (opens in a new tab) and Sendmarc (opens in a new tab) process DMARC reports for free within limits, Valimail (opens in a new tab) lets you sign up for its Monitor product free, and DemiSignal's free check tells you what your domain publishes; the free tiers stop at a top-10 list of sources, a few weeks of history, one or two domains, or personal use only. DemiSignal's free tier is the one-off domain scan, with no account and no card; its DMARC report monitoring is paid, starting with the Starter plan at $19 a month. This page separates the three things free DMARC monitoring can mean, lists the free tiers with the limits their own pages state, and shows where free stops.

Three things free DMARC monitoring can mean

Google's guide to DMARC reports (opens in a new tab) explains the mechanism: you set up Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) to receive regular reports from the email servers that get email from your domain, and the reports are sent to the address in your DMARC record's rua tag, usually once a day by email, from every mail server you send to. The raw reports are XML, Google describes them as difficult to read in raw format, and it recommends a third-party service to receive, store and analyse them. RFC 9989 (opens in a new tab), the DMARC standard, agrees: the reports are formatted so that machine parsing is recommended, and many third-party services exist to process them, or you can build your own tools.

That gives three meanings of free:

  1. The reports themselves. Point rua at a mailbox you own and the XML arrives there. Reading it is the work. Our guide to DMARC reports reads one aggregate report line by line.
  2. A free tier at a provider. A service receives the reports for you and shows a summary. The next section lists the free tiers and the limits each vendor states.
  3. A free DNS check. DemiSignal's check reads the public DNS records of the domain you enter and tells you whether SPF, DMARC, DKIM and MX records are published and set up correctly. A DNS finding shows how your domain is set up; it does not show where a particular message landed.

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Free tiers that process your reports

These are the free tiers on the vendors' own pricing pages: Postmark's free DMARC monitoring (opens in a new tab), dmarcian's pricing (opens in a new tab), Sendmarc's pricing (opens in a new tab) and Valimail's pricing (opens in a new tab). Check the page before you rely on one.

Service What the free tier gives Stated limits
Postmark Free Monitoring Processes reports from major ISPs into a weekly email summary; described as great for monitoring personal domains Top 10 mail sources with 5 IPs each, 7 days, email only, weekly
dmarcian Personal A free account for non-business personal use, at $0 a month Up to 2 active domains sending under 1,250 emails a month, 1 month of data history; accounts are audited and expire if a domain is associated with a business
Sendmarc Free Basic Reporting DMARC visibility and insights, with aggregate reports Up to 5k emails, 1 domain, 21 days of data history, 1 portal user
Valimail Monitor Visibility across your domains, with services identified by name; sign up free Limits not stated on the pricing page

Trials are the other route in. EasyDMARC (opens in a new tab) and Red Sift (opens in a new tab) start with a free trial and no credit card required; dmarcian's paid plans come with a 30-day trial, with no credit card unless you continue; URIports (opens in a new tab) gives a free one-month trial with no payment details, plus a Sand plan for personal and hobby projects at USD 15 a year, which is cheap rather than free.

Postmark's paid tier, DMARC Digests, shows all mail sources and IPs with 60 days of history for $14 a month per domain, which is a fair marker of what the free digest leaves out.

What a free DNS check shows, and what it cannot

DemiSignal's free check reads the public DNS records of the domain you enter, with no account needed, and runs four checks: SPF, DMARC, DKIM and MX. For DMARC it flags a missing record, a policy of none, no reporting address, a policy that covers only part of your email, and subdomains left at none. The findings combine into a health score out of 100, each check comes back as pass, warning, fail or error, and the results page explains what each result means and what to fix first. Nothing is changed and no email is sent.

What it cannot do is see a report. The check page is plain about it: a DNS finding shows how your domain is set up; it does not show where a particular message landed. DemiSignal's home page puts the gap the other way round: DNS checks tell you which settings are published, DMARC reports tell you how real sending traffic is being handled, and you need both to make an informed policy change.

If the check finds no DMARC record, the free DMARC record generator builds one step at a time, starting by monitoring with a reporting address; nothing you enter is saved. See also our guide to the no DMARC record found warning.

Where free stops

The limits in the table are the honest answer. Postmark's (opens in a new tab) free digest shows the top 10 sources and 7 days by email only; dmarcian's (opens in a new tab) Personal plan is for non-business domains under 1,250 emails a month and is audited; Sendmarc's (opens in a new tab) free tier covers one domain, 5k emails and 21 days.

The other thing to keep in mind is that DNS changes while you watch reports. DemiSignal's check page explains why that matters: DNS records change when someone adds an email tool, moves providers or edits a record by hand, so one check is a snapshot. Its paid plans check your records on a schedule, alert you when something changes, and read the DMARC reports receivers send.

What DemiSignal gives away, and what Starter adds

DemiSignal's pricing page is explicit. Scan for free, monitor with a paid plan: the free one-off domain scan needs no account and no card, ongoing monitoring is paid, and every paid plan includes DMARC report monitoring, scheduled email checks and change alerts. The free tools, the domain check and the SPF and DMARC record generators, need no signup, and nothing you enter is stored.

Starter costs $19 a month, or $190 billed yearly, for one business domain with 100,000 DMARC-passing messages a month. Only messages in accepted reports that pass DMARC through aligned SPF or DKIM count; failed or potentially spoofed traffic stays visible and does not use the allowance. You connect reports by adding a private reporting address to your DMARC record, which does not change your policy, and the first report commonly arrives within 24 to 48 hours. Aggregate reports contain no email bodies or recipient addresses. You can cancel in billing settings, and monitoring continues until the end of the paid period.

Start with the free check to see whether your domain has a DMARC record and a reporting address at all.

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Frequently asked questions

Can I monitor DMARC without paying anything?

Within limits, yes. Postmark's free weekly digest, dmarcian's Personal plan for non-business domains, Sendmarc's Free Basic Reporting and Valimail Monitor are free tiers. The limits are on history, sources, domains and business use.

Is DemiSignal's DMARC monitoring free?

No. The one-off domain scan and the SPF and DMARC record generators are free, with no account, card or signup. DMARC report monitoring, scheduled DNS checks and change alerts are part of the paid plans, starting with Starter at $19 a month.

Do free DMARC tools change my DNS?

A DNS check does not: DemiSignal's check only reads the public records of the domain you enter, and nothing is changed. Report monitoring, free or paid, needs someone with DNS access to add the service's reporting address to the rua tag of your DMARC record.

Check your domain now

See the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records your domain publishes and what to fix first. Free, no account needed.

Create a free account