Are the free tools really free?

21 June 2026 · 2 min read

Yes, genuinely free. Our public checkers and the report analyser run without an account, without a credit card and without a trial clock counting down. You can use them as often as you like, on as many domains as you like, including domains you do not own (handy for vetting a supplier or a prospect). There is no paywall hiding the actual result, no "sign up to see your score" gate and no drip-feed where the first lookup is free and the second one asks for payment. Paste a domain or a record, read the verdict, close the tab. That is the whole transaction.

What you get for free covers the full diagnostic surface of email authentication:

• DMARC checker: fetches and parses your _dmarc TXT record, flags syntax errors and tells you whether your policy is p=none, p=quarantine or p=reject.
• SPF checker: resolves your SPF record, counts the DNS lookups against the limit of 10 and warns when a +all or a stray include is putting you at risk.
• DKIM checker: looks up a selector and validates the published public key.
• BIMI checker: inspects your BIMI record, SVG logo and (where present) the VMC certificate.
• DMARC report analyser: drop in a raw aggregate (RUA) XML file and get a readable breakdown of which sources passed, which failed and where your real mail is coming from.

These tools are deliberately useful on their own. They run the same parsing and DNS logic the platform uses internally, so the answer you see in the free checker is the answer we would act on. A lot of people find a problem with a checker, fix the record by hand and never need anything else, and that is completely fine. We would rather you have a correct DNS record than an account you do not use.

Where the paid platform differs is in the ongoing, done-for-you side that a one-off check cannot give you. A free check is a snapshot of right now; it cannot watch your domain over time, cannot collect the daily RUA reports that providers send back, and cannot walk you safely from p=none to p=reject without guessing which legitimate senders you might break. The platform hosts your DMARC, SPF, DKIM, MTA-STS and BIMI behind delegated records so changes go live without you editing DNS, ingests and stores your aggregate reports continuously, and emails you when a new sending source appears or when alignment drops, so you can move to enforcement without a quiet outage. The free report analyser reads one file you happen to have; the platform receives every report automatically, keeps the history and turns it into a trend.

So the honest summary: the tools are free forever and you never have to upgrade to use them. If you only need to check a record, you are done. If you want continuous monitoring, hosted records and a guided path to p=reject across a portfolio of domains, that is what the dashboard and the paid plans are for. See our requirements guide for what the major mailbox providers now expect, and the glossary if any of the terms above are unfamiliar.