Since February 1, 2024, Gmail and Yahoo have implemented new requirements for email senders to better protect users' inboxes from spam while ensuring legitimate emails are delivered. On May 5, 2025, Microsoft announced it would adopt similar standards. With the rest of the industry expected to follow, it’s essential for all email senders to comply with these requirements.
In this article, we'll explain what these sender requirements are and what actions you need to take to be compliant. You'll also find a quick recap in the table below:
| Sender requirements | Actions to take | |
| All email senders | Send emails from a custom domain |
Use a custom domain (not a free domain like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, or @outlook.com) and set up a professional email address through a provider such as GoDaddy or OVH. |
| Authenticate your domain with DKIM and DMARC |
Add the Brevo code, DKIM record, and DMARC record to your domain. ➡️ To learn more, check our dedicated article Authenticate your domain with Brevo (Brevo code, DKIM record, DMARC record). |
|
| Stay under a 0.3% spam complaint rate | Follow our best practices for email deliverability and use Gmail's Postmaster Tools to monitor your spam complaint rate. | |
| Bulk email senders (> 5.000 emails per day) with a dedicated IP | Align the email address you use to send emails with the domain you have authenticated with DKIM or SPF | Make sure that the email address you're sending emails from matches the domain you authenticated with DKIM or SPF, or is a subdomain of it. |
What all senders should do
🌐 Send from a custom domain (not a free domain like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, or @outlook.com)
If you send emails from a free domain like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, or @outlook.com, they’re more likely to land in your recipients’ spam folders.
To improve deliverability and appear more professional, use a custom domain instead. You can set one up through providers like GoDaddy or OVH. An email address with a custom domain not only builds trust with your audience but also increases the chances that your emails will reach their inboxes.
➡️ To learn more, check our dedicated article Why you need to replace your free email address with a professional one.
🔒 Authenticate your domain with DKIM and DMARC
DKIM and DMARC are email authentication methods that help protect against spam, phishing, and other malicious activity. They also increase the chances that your emails will reach your recipients' inboxes.
➡️ To access a detailed procedure for authenticating your domain with DKIM and DMARC, check our dedicated article Authenticate your domain with Brevo (Brevo code, DKIM, DMARC).
To verify whether your domain is authenticated with DKIM and DMARC:
- Click your account dropdown and select Senders, Domains, and Dedicated IPs.
- Go to the Senders tab.
- Next to each sender, make sure the DKIM signature and DMARC policy are marked with a green checkmark ✅.
If the DKIM signature and/or DMARC policy are marked with an orange warning icon ⚠️, it means your domain hasn’t been authenticated correctly.
If you already have a DMARC record in place, but it is missing a rua tag, you can update your existing DMARC record and add Brevo's rua tag at the end. Your DMARC record should then have the following value:
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:rua@dmarc.brevo.com
📉 Stay under a 0.3% spam complaint rate
Gmail requires that you keep your spam complaint rate below 0.3% in Postmaster Tools. This tool lets you monitor key metrics like delivery errors, spam reports, and more through various dashboards.
If your complaint rate exceeds the limit, your emails are more likely to be flagged as spam, with little chance of reaching the inbox again. To learn how to reduce your spam complaint rate, check our dedicated articles Best practices for email deliverability and Why are emails being delivered to the spam folder?.
Step 1. Get started with Postmaster Tools
The first step is to go to Postmaster Tools and add your domain there so that Gmail can retrieve your email statistics:
- Go to Postmaster Tools.
- Click Get Started.
- Enter the domain that you use to send your emails.
- Copy the TXT record provided by Gmail's Postmaster Tools.
Step 2. Verify your domain
To access your email statistics, Gmail needs to verify that you own the domain. To do this, copy the DNS record provided in Postmaster Tools and add it to your domain provider’s DNS settings.
- In a new tab, log in to your domain provider account. If you don't know what your domain provider is, you can check our dedicated article Identify your domain provider.
- Go to the page where you update DNS records.
- Create a new DNS record with a TXT type.
- Paste the value you copied from Postmaster Tools.
- Save your DNS record.
- Go back to Gmail's Postmaster Tools and click Verify.
Once verified, you’ll be able to view your spam complaint rate from Gmail addresses, along with other valuable email performance data.
To learn more about how to use Postmaster Tools, check Google's dedicated help center section.
What bulk senders (> 5.000 emails per day) with a dedicated IP should do
🤝 Align the email address you use to send emails with the domain you have authenticated with DKIM or SPF
If you send more than 5,000 emails per day and are on a dedicated IP, you will also have to make sure that the domain part of the email address you use to send emails matches the domain you authenticated with SPF or DKIM. This alignment ensures that the DKIM and/or SPF signatures on your emails match the domain authenticated in Brevo.
Here are some examples of alignments between your authenticated domain and your sender's email address:
| Authenticated domain | Sender's email address | |
| Example 1 ✅ | mycompany.com | marketing@mycompany.com |
| Example 2 ✅ | news.mycompany.com | marketing@news.mycompany.com |
| Example 3 ✅ | mycompany.com | marketing@news.mycompany.com |
| Example 4 ❌ | news.mycompany.com | marketing@mycompany.com |
What happens if I don't follow these requirements?
Ideally, you should already be following Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s requirements to avoid having your emails marked as spam or blocked.
If you haven’t made these changes yet, Brevo has you covered. For now, we’ll temporarily replace your sender address with one that meets these requirements. This applies if you’re using a free email address or haven’t authenticated your domain, but still need to send emails to Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft recipients. This helps ensure your emails continue to reach your contacts' inboxes.
Note that some recipients might mark your emails are spam, even if they originally landed in their inbox, because they won't recognize the sender's email address. That's another reason why we highly recommend you follow Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft's requirements as soon as possible.
For a preview of what your email address will look like to your recipients, refer to the following example:
| Original email address | mycompany@gmail.com |
| Replaced email address for marketing emails | mycompany@5000001.brevosend.com |
| Replaced email address for transactional emails | mycompany@5000001.t-sender-sib.com |
FAQs
Gmail and Yahoo have been implementing these requirements since February 1, 2024. Microsoft announced it would adopt similar standards on May 5, 2025.
If you use a free email address or haven't authenticated your domain yet, Brevo is giving you more time to implement the changes by temporarily replacing your email address with a compliant one, but you will eventually need to make the changes to send with your own domain.
No, these requirements are required by Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft regardless of the email provider you use, whether it's Brevo or another service.
Yes, transactional senders should also follow Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft's requirements, especially if they send more than 5,000 emails a day.
Given that major mailbox providers such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have implemented these requirements, the rest of the industry will likely soon require all senders to authenticate their domains. That's why we recommend that all senders follow these requirements.
Yes, Brevo will replace any free email addresses used for sending emails, regardless of the recipients.
If you already have a DMARC record in place, but it is missing a rua tag, you can update your existing DMARC record and add Brevo's rua tag at the end. Your DMARC record should then have the following value:
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:rua@dmarc.brevo.com
No action is needed on your side for these other requirements implemented by Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft:
- When setting up your dedicated IP, you have already authenticated your domain using SPF. Additionally, SPF is not necessary for users on a shared IP.
- Brevo already ensures that sending domains or IPs have valid forward and reverse DNS records (PTR records).
- Brevo already formats emails according to the Internet Message Format standard (RFC 5322).
- Brevo already supports a one-click unsubscribe for the list-unsubscribe header (RFC 8058) and includes a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the email body of marketing and subscribed emails.
⏭️ What's next?
For a more detailed review of Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft's new sender requirements, check:
🤔 Have a question?
If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.
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