DMARC limitations

Limited visibility into final mailbox placement

DMARC aggregate reports provide information about authentication results and policy enforcement but do not reveal whether an email was placed in the inbox or spam folder. This is an intentional design choice in the DMARC standard, as sharing such data could help malicious actors analyze and manipulate filtering systems to bypass spam detection.

As a result:

• DMARC compliance does not guarantee inbox placement—other factors such as domain and IP address reputation, email content, and recipient engagement also play a role.
• Emails that appear as “delivered” in reports may still be filtered into spam by the recipient’s mail provider.

However, DMARC monitoring remains essential for securing your domain against unauthorized email use, identifying authentication failures, and ensuring legitimate emails are properly authenticated. By ruling out verification issues as a cause of non-delivery, DMARC monitoring allows you to focus on improving reputation, engagement, and content quality to enhance inbox placement.

For more details, see RFC draft section 7.3: Disclosure of Filtering Information.