No DMARC record found
`your domain` publishes no DMARC policy, so receiving mail servers have no instruction on what to do with messages that forge your domain in the From: address.
Why it matters
`your domain` publishes no DMARC policy, so receiving mail servers have no instruction on what to do with messages that forge your domain in the From: address. Anyone can send email that appears to come from your product — password resets, invoices, support replies — and it will reach your customers' inboxes looking authentic. This is the single most common way a small SaaS gets used to phish its own users.
How ShipReady detects it
Email-authentication DNS records (DMARC / SPF). Almost every AI-built SaaS sends transactional email — password resets, magic links, receipts — through Resend, SendGrid or Postmark. Setting that up gets the mail delivered; it does not stop anyone else sending mail that claims to come from the same domain. Without a DMARC policy, a receiving server has no instruction to reject a forgery, so an attacker can send "reset your password" from the product's own domain and the message will land in the inbox looking authentic. This check is almost entirely DNS rather than HTTP — one exception is MTA-STS, whose policy is only half-published in DNS; the other half is a file fetched over HTTPS (see _check_mta_sts). Nearly everything else here is the most deterministic kind of check the scanner has: a record either exists or it does not, so there is no heuristic and no false-positive surface. The one place judgement is required is deciding WHICH domain to ask about — see _organizational_domain.
Detection is deterministic. ShipReady reports this only when it observes the condition directly, and prefers to miss a real problem over inventing one. Rule version 1.10.0.
How to fix it
This is the prompt ShipReady puts in your report — written to be pasted straight into Cursor, Claude Code, or whichever assistant built the app.
The domain your domain has no DMARC record, so nobody can stop mail being forged from your domain. Add a TXT record at _dmarc.your domain starting with a monitoring policy, e.g. "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc@your domain". Watch the aggregate reports until you are certain all of your legitimate senders (your app's transactional provider, your team's mailboxes, any marketing tool) pass alignment, then tighten the policy to p=quarantine and finally p=reject. Do not start at p=reject — you will silently drop your own mail.
Frequently asked questions
- What does "No DMARC record found" mean?
- `your domain` publishes no DMARC policy, so receiving mail servers have no instruction on what to do with messages that forge your domain in the From: address.
- How serious is it?
- ShipReady rates this medium. Fix soon. Meaningfully weakens a defence or degrades how the site works.
- How do I fix it?
- Paste the fix prompt on this page into Cursor, Claude Code or your AI editor. It is the same prompt ShipReady puts in your report.
- Can I check my own site?
- Yes — ShipReady scans up to ten pages of any public site for free and reports this alongside every other check. The free report lists every issue it finds and shows full evidence and a fix prompt for the critical and high-severity ones; medium and low findings are counted and unlock on Pro.
Related checks
Run this check on your site
ShipReady checks this and 193 other things across up to ten pages of your site, with an AI-ready fix for each. Free, no signup.