Requirements you can read from a message
Since February 2024 Gmail and Yahoo have enforced fixed minimum requirements for senders of more than roughly 5,000 messages a day, and since May 2025 Microsoft has followed for Outlook.com. Most of it is technical and can be verified on a single delivered message: whether it is authenticated, which way it came and how it is built.
The report turns these points into a checklist. How to meet each requirement is covered in the guide Bulk Sender Requirements — this page is about what the checklist checks and how to read its result.
What AnalyzeMy.Email checks
- SPF passes — evaluated for the domain of the envelope sender (Return-Path); which domain that was is shown in the result. Any result other than
pass,softfailincluded, counts as not met. - DKIM passes — at least one DKIM signature on the message verifies (
dkim=pass). - DMARC record published — for the From domain, or failing that for its organizational domain.
p=noneis enough; the policy found is shown in the result. - Alignment (DMARC pass) — SPF or DKIM has to pass for a domain that matches the visible From domain. The message's DMARC result is what counts.
- Reverse DNS (FCrDNS) — the sending IP needs a PTR record, and that name has to resolve back to the same IP (A or AAAA). If the PTR is missing or points elsewhere, the point is not met; if it cannot be queried, it shows
warn. - TLS in transit — did the message reach us over an encrypted connection? Unencrypted delivery is not met.
- RFC 5322 format —
Message-IDandDatepresent and exactly oneFromheader. - One-click unsubscribe — met when the List-Unsubscribe check confirms one-click. If it is missing the point only shows
warn: it is mandatory for marketing and newsletter mail, not for transactional mail. - Spam complaint rate below 0.3 % — listed as
info, because it cannot be measured on a single message. Only the receiver sees it, in Google Postmaster Tools or the Yahoo Sender Hub.
How the overall verdict comes about
The checklist gets an overall verdict: fail as soon as one point is not met, otherwise warn as soon as one shows a warning, and pass only without either. The info point on the complaint rate does not count towards it. The verdict does not affect the Security Score — it is a separate assessment alongside it.
If the message does not look like bulk mail — no List-Unsubscribe, no List-Id, no Feedback-ID, no Precedence: bulk or list — the report says so. The checklist is then guidance, not an obligation. The technical points still improve delivery, below the threshold too.
What a single message does not show
- The complaint rate. In practice the most common cause of delivery problems — and the one point no test message can answer.
- Whether you are above the threshold. Volume is counted per provider and day across your sender domain. Only the receiver sees that.
- Whether the unsubscribe works. The headers are checked, not the endpoint behind them, and not whether unsubscribes are applied within two days.
- Other sending paths. The result applies to the path this message took. If the newsletter goes through a different service than your test message, send the test through exactly that service.
Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft compared
Gmail and Yahoo require every point on the list. For Outlook.com Microsoft mandates SPF, DKIM and DMARC with at least p=none and alignment via SPF or DKIM; a working unsubscribe and clean list hygiene are listed as recommendations. The checklist tests against the stricter version — meeting it covers the technical requirements of all three.
Typical gaps in the result
- SPF passes, alignment does not. The sending service uses its own bounce domain as the envelope sender. SPF then passes for the service, not for you — without a DKIM signature in your domain, DMARC fails.
- Reverse DNS missing on self-hosted servers: the PTR record is set by whoever provides the IP, not in your own DNS zone. How to do it is covered in Set Up Reverse DNS.
- One-click on
warnfor an invoice or password message is fine. For a newsletter it is a gap in a mandatory requirement.