DMARC and Free Email Providers

DMARC stands for “Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance” and it is a domain’s authentication policy statement that informs receiving servers what they should do if an email fails SPF or DKIM authentication. Depending on what the domain’s policy outlines, the receiving server will either accept or bounce the email.

Although DMARC policies make things harder by misidentifying valid email communications as fraudulent, it is necessary and helps in the big scope of things by blocking the delivery of real fraudulent emails.

The Problem with DMARC and Free Email Providers

Some free email providers, like Yahoo! and AOL, have adopted strict DMARC policies to prevent spam and spoofing. This affects the deliverability of your emails when you use an email service provider like Feedb, and provide a Yahoo! or AOL email address as your From email address when sending email from the application. Basically what happens is that Yahoo!’s DMARC policy will tell receiving servers that the email should be rejected because it wasn’t sent through a Yahoo! server.

What You Need to Do

Yahoo! and AOL currently features very strict DMARC policies and other email providers may follow suit anytime soon.

The best option to protect yourself agains this (and also improve your branding) is to register for a private domain if you don’t already have one like you@yourdomain.com Some registrars you can use include: Google Domains (recommended option), Go Daddy and Register.com

If you only have a Yahoo! or AOL email address, and can’t register a private domain, we will give you a safe From email address to ensure your campaign is successfully delivered. We’ll add send.feed.io or mail.feedb.io to your From email address to comply with this policy and help get your campaigns delivered.

If you have a Yahoo or AOL email address as the From an email in Feedb,  it will be detected by the system and the option will be given to switching to a safe email format.