BIMI Record Lookup

What is BIMI?

Brand Indicators for Message Identification is a DNS-based standard that lets a domain owner display their brand logo next to authenticated email in supporting clients. Instead of a generic avatar or initials, the recipient sees your actual mark — the same way a verified checkmark works on social platforms, but for the inbox. It's the visible reward for getting SPF, DKIM, and DMARC right.

How BIMI works

You publish a TXT record at default._bimi.yourdomain.com pointing to an SVG logo hosted on your own infrastructure. When a mail client receives a message from your domain, it checks whether the message passed DMARC. If it did, the client fetches the BIMI record, validates the logo, and renders it in the inbox row.

The full record format is straightforward: v=BIMI1; l=https://example.com/logo.svg; a=https://example.com/vmc.pem. Only three tags exist — version, logo URL, and authority (VMC) URL — and only the version and logo URL are required.

What you need to ship BIMI

• DMARC enforcement. Your DMARC record must publish p=quarantine or p=reject. Monitoring-only (p=none) won't work — no client will display the logo. This is the single most common reason BIMI fails: the record is published, the logo is hosted, but DMARC is still in monitoring mode.
• SVG Tiny Portable/Secure. A specific SVG profile (SVG-PS, defined in draft-svg-tiny-ps-abrotman) — no scripts, no external references, square aspect ratio, centred on a solid background. Most logo SVGs need to be re-exported to comply.
• HTTPS hosting. The logo URL must be HTTPS. Receivers won't fetch over HTTP.
• VMC (optional but required for Gmail). A Verified Mark Certificate issued by DigiCert or Entrust. The VMC is a PEM-encoded certificate that attests you own the trademark on the logo — and it costs around $1,500/year and requires a registered trademark. Without one, Gmail will not display your logo. Apple Mail and Yahoo will display the logo without a VMC.

Where the logo appears

Gmail — both web and the iOS/Android apps. Requires a VMC. The avatar circle next to authenticated mail becomes your logo.

Apple Mail — iOS 16+ and macOS Ventura+. No VMC required. The sender avatar in the inbox list and in the message header becomes the logo.

Yahoo Mail — an early adopter and the test bed for the standard. No VMC strictly required, though one helps.

Other clients — Fastmail and Hotmail/Outlook have BIMI support on roadmap but not deployed. Most desktop MUAs ignore BIMI entirely.

BIMI + DMARC + DKIM, together

BIMI is the icing on a four-layer cake. SPF says "this IP is allowed to send for this domain." DKIM says "this message was signed by this domain and not modified." DMARC says "if SPF or DKIM aligns with the From: header, deliver — otherwise apply this policy." BIMI adds: "and when all of that passes, show the brand." Without working SPF, DKIM, and an enforcing DMARC policy, BIMI does nothing. With them, it turns invisible plumbing into a visible signal of legitimacy that recipients actually see.