MailCheck

BIMI: how to get your logo into your recipients' inbox

With BIMI, mailbox providers such as Gmail, Apple Mail and Yahoo show your company logo next to your messages. Before that happens, SPF, DKIM and DMARC have to be set up properly.

Updated: 05 November 2026

What BIMI is

BIMI stands for Brand Indicators for Message Identification. Technically there is not much to it: a DNS record pointing to a logo file. The recipient's mailbox provider fetches the logo and shows it in the message list instead of the usual initial in a circle.

A logo next to a message signals trust, so providers only show it for senders whose domain is protected against forgery.

Prerequisites

Before you spend time on the logo, check three things:

  1. DMARC is at p=quarantine or p=reject for all mail. A pct= below 100 is not enough.
  2. Your messages actually pass DMARC, with an aligned SPF result or an aligned DKIM signature.
  3. If you send from a subdomain, the parent domain is at quarantine or reject too, and sp= is not none.

While DMARC is still at p=none, BIMI has no effect, however good the logo is.

The logo

The logo must be an SVG file in the "SVG Tiny Portable/Secure" profile (SVG Tiny PS). That is stricter than regular SVG:

  • square, with a <title> element
  • no scripts, no embedded images, no references to external files
  • served over HTTPS, ideally smaller than 32 KB

Most design tools cannot export this profile directly. The BIMI Group's converters and validators help, as does an agency that has done it before. Use a solid, non-transparent background and leave some margin, because providers usually crop the logo to a circle.

Mark certificate: VMC or CMC

Gmail and Apple Mail only show the logo with a mark certificate. Gmail accepts two kinds, Apple Mail currently only the VMC.

A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) requires a registered trademark that matches the logo. A Common Mark Certificate (CMC) works without a trademark. Instead you prove that the logo has been shown on your website for at least twelve months, usually through a web archive such as archive.org. With a VMC, Gmail also shows a blue tick next to the sender.

Only a few certificate authorities, such as DigiCert and GlobalSign, issue them. The certificates carry an annual fee, and validation takes anything from several days to a few weeks. Yahoo and Fastmail can show the logo without a certificate, Yahoo only for senders with enough volume and a good reputation.

The BIMI record

Put the logo and the certificate on a web server, then publish the TXT record at default._bimi:

default._bimi.example.com.  TXT  "v=BIMI1; l=https://example.com/bimi/logo.svg; a=https://example.com/bimi/vmc.pem"

l= points to the logo, a= to the certificate in PEM format. Without a certificate, leave a= empty. Because providers cache logos, it can take a few days for the logo to appear in the first inboxes.

Common stumbling blocks

The logo is rejected as invalid because the export quietly embedded an <image> element or a font. The web server serves the file with the wrong content type, or only via a redirect. The certificate belongs to a different version of the logo than the one published. Very often, DMARC is simply still at none.

Checking BIMI

After a test message to ZwoMailCheck you see whether the BIMI record is found and whether your DMARC setting is strong enough. The logo is checked against the SVG Tiny PS profile, the certificate for validity. If the record is missing but everything else is ready, you get a ready-made record to publish.