No DMARC record — what to publish first
DMARC (RFC 7489) ties SPF and DKIM together: it tells receivers what to do when a message claiming to be from your domain fails both, and it asks them to send you reports about it.
Since February 2024 Google and Yahoo have required a DMARC record from anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to their users, and Microsoft began enforcing the same for Outlook.com in May 2025.
Start at p=none. It changes nothing about how your mail is handled and simply turns on reporting, which is what you need before you can safely enforce.
How to fix it
- 1Publish a TXT record at _dmarc.yourdomain.com with: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@yourdomain.com
- 2Make sure the mailbox in rua= actually exists and can absorb a daily volume of XML attachments.
- 3Leave it at p=none for two to four weeks and read the reports.
- 4Fix every legitimate sender that fails alignment.
- 5Move to p=quarantine, then to p=reject. Enforcement is the point; p=none forever provides no protection.
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Related guides
- DKIM record with empty p= — a revoked key still in use
- SPF include points at a domain with no SPF record — a silent PermError
- DMARC record syntax errors that make receivers skip your policy
- DMARC external destination not authorized — why you receive no reports
- Two DMARC records at _dmarc — why your policy is being ignored