If you’re looking for an alternative to Cloudflare DMARC Management, you probably want a more complete platform that can help you monitor email authentication and security for your business or personal domain.
Although Cloudflare DMARC Management is free, it is quite limited and, in many cases, does not provide enough information to give you a clear picture of what is happening.
A complete monitoring platform should present the information contained in DMARC reports in a clear way, let you analyze problems in detail, troubleshoot them in real time, guide you towards enforcing a stricter policy, monitor incoming email through TLS reports, and enforce secure delivery with MTA-STS.
Main alternatives to Cloudflare DMARC
The main alternatives to Cloudflare DMARC Management are (prices based on annual billing):
- EasyDMARC, starting at $35.99 per month for 2 domains and up to 100,000 reported emails per month (with a limited free plan).
- Valimail, with paid plans starting at $5,000 per year.
- dmarcian, starting at $19.99 per month for 2 domains and up to 100,000 reported emails per month.
- PowerDMARC, starting at $12 per month for 5 domains and up to 100,000 reported emails per month.
- DMARCwise, starting at 15 € per month for 3 domains, with no limit on email volume.
In many cases, including DMARCwise, a free plan is also available with limited features and usage, usually covering one domain with low email activity. These free plans may be suitable for individuals or microbusinesses in some cases.
Comparison for Cloudflare users
If you’re coming from Cloudflare, you probably expect a platform that is fast, affordable, and does not impose too many limits. Here’s how the main alternatives compare:
- EasyDMARC is a complete platform, but at $35.99 per month it only lets you monitor 2 domains with limited email volume, which is fairly expensive. Many features require an even more expensive subscription.
- Valimail provides monitoring for free, but some features are only available on paid plans, which start at $5,000 per year. That is probably outside your budget. We have also heard from several organizations that they were repeatedly pushed to upgrade to an expensive paid plan, regardless of their size.
- dmarcian was one of the first products in this space, but in addition to having the same limits as EasyDMARC, it lacks some essential features such as DMARC record hosting, DNS record compliance checks, and MTA-STS for secure incoming email delivery.
- PowerDMARC is a complete platform, but it quickly becomes expensive. Pricing is not disclosed if you have more than 5 domains, and if you send one million emails per month, it costs $200 per month.
For the rest of this page, we’ll focus on DMARCwise, because we believe it is the best product for people moving from Cloudflare DMARC Management.
Features in common: Cloudflare vs DMARCwise
DMARCwise not only includes all the features available in Cloudflare, but extends them to make them more useful and complete, while offering many more features of its own. At a high level:
| Feature | Cloudflare | DMARCwise |
|---|---|---|
| Easy-to-use dashboard | Available | Available |
| View and inspect top sending sources | Yes, but without sending service mapping or grouping, and with very limited detail
when you select a source. | Sources are categorized by authentication status, with recognizable source names and
advanced drill-down and data exploration features to help with troubleshooting. |
| IP inspection | Available | Available |
| DNS record validation | Yes, but limited. | Complete validation suite and automatic checks against best practices. |
| SPF record inspection | Yes, but it must be triggered manually and is limited to detecting the 10 DNS lookup
limit. | Automatic periodic full-chain resolution, with warnings for all limits and parsing
issues and full SPF specification coverage. |
Where Cloudflare wins
Cloudflare DMARC Management’s main advantage, besides being free, is its integration with other Cloudflare services. If you already use Cloudflare, you may find it convenient to have everything in one place.
The information provided by Cloudflare DMARC Management is very basic, but in some cases it may be enough for very simple setups that are not managed by a team.
You still need to visit the dashboard regularly to manually check the authentication status of each domain and confirm, for example, that the SPF record is configured correctly.
Where DMARCwise wins
DMARCwise is a much more advanced and complete platform. In addition to everything already listed above, it includes:
Visibility and troubleshooting
- Monitoring of any domain with any DNS provider, not just Cloudflare DNS.
- A dedicated dashboard that gives you an overview of email authentication across every domain in your portfolio.
- Advanced data exploration to make troubleshooting easier.
- The ability to view original DMARC reports in a simple interface and export them.
DNS and SPF/DKIM monitoring
- DNS record history.
- DNS record validation with full specification coverage to highlight errors.
- Advanced SPF record inspection and resolution-chain analysis, highlighting every limit defined by the specification, not only the main limit of 10 DNS lookups.
- DKIM selector exploration, divided into active and inactive selectors, so you can quickly find missing DNS records or stale selectors that can be retired.
Inbound security
- Secure incoming email delivery monitoring through TLS reports (TLSRPT).
- MTA-STS policy hosting to enforce secure incoming SMTP delivery. We take care of certificate issuance and renewal, as well as policy rollout.
Hosted services
- DMARC DNS record hosting.
- MTA-STS policy hosting.
Staying protected
- Email digests that keep you up to date on your domains' weekly DMARC activity and alert you to any problems.
Compliance and support
- The REST API lets you manage domains, retrieve DNS setup instructions, and access report data programmatically.
- Unlike Cloudflare, DMARCwise is made and hosted in the European Union, and your data is stored on European infrastructure for full GDPR compliance.
- Support is available in English and Italian from people familiar with email authentication standards.
Choosing between Cloudflare DMARC and DMARCwise
Choose Cloudflare DMARC Management if you prefer a basic solution that is integrated with the rest of Cloudflare.
Choose DMARCwise if you prefer an independent, complete solution with specialized support. To get started, you can create a free account. If you have any questions, contact us by email.