Mail health check
Find out whether your email will reach the inbox. We check your MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, count your SPF lookups, and look your domain up on the spam blocklists. Free, no sign-up.
Know the day you land on a blocklist.
Barkme looks your domain up on Spamhaus, SURBL and URIBL every day and alerts you the moment it is listed - alongside uptime, SSL certificate and domain expiry monitoring.
What we check
Every check, and why it matters.
Mail servers (MX)
The servers that receive email for your domain, in priority order.
Why it matters. Without an MX record, mail to your addresses bounces. A stale MX after switching providers silently delivers to the old one.
SPF
A TXT record that lists which servers may send email as your domain. We also count the DNS lookups it needs, following every include.
Why it matters. Receivers check the sending server against this list. A missing record, a second record, or more than 10 DNS lookups all make SPF fail - and your mail drifts into spam.
DKIM
The public key receivers use to verify the signature on your outgoing mail, published under a selector name.
Why it matters. DKIM proves a message really came from you and was not changed on the way. Gmail and Yahoo require it from anyone sending at volume.
DMARC
The policy that tells receivers what to do with mail that fails SPF and DKIM, and where to send reports about it.
Why it matters. DMARC is what actually stops spoofing: p=none only watches, quarantine sends fakes to spam, and reject refuses them. Major inboxes now require at least p=none.
Spam blocklists
Whether your domain appears on Spamhaus DBL, SURBL or URIBL - the domain blocklists spam filters rely on.
Why it matters. A listing gets mail rejected or sent to spam wherever those lists are used, including other people's mail that merely links to you.
MTA-STS
A policy telling other mail servers to deliver to you only over encrypted, verified connections.
Why it matters. It stops an attacker on the network from quietly downgrading delivery to plain text.
TLS reporting (TLS-RPT)
An address where other mail servers report failed secure deliveries to you.
Why it matters. You hear about delivery problems before your users do.
BIMI brand logo
A record that points supporting inboxes to your logo.
Why it matters. Your logo next to your mail builds recognition and trust. It only works once DMARC is at quarantine or reject.
Reading the results
Five verdicts.
- Pass
- Healthy. Nothing to do.
- Warning
- Works today, but worth fixing before it causes trouble.
- Fail
- Broken, or about to break. Fix these first.
- Info
- Optional or informational. Not a problem.
- Not checked
- We did not get a clear answer. It says nothing bad about your domain - try again later.
What we do - and don't
A light touch.
- DNS and blocklist lookups only. We never connect to your mail servers and never send test email.
- DKIM is probed under the selectors common providers use - a custom selector cannot be discovered from outside.
- Results are kept for 24 hours so you can share the link. We do not record who ran the check.