What is BIMI? Getting your logo in Gmail and Apple Mail

Published October 12, 2026 · about a 6-minute read

You've seen it: some companies' emails show a little round brand logo next to the sender name in Gmail, while yours is a grey circle with your first initial. That logo is BIMI, and it's a genuine trust signal in a crowded inbox. Here's the part the "get your logo in Gmail!" blog posts bury, though — you can't just turn BIMI on. It's the prize at the end of getting your email authentication fully in order, and that journey is the real value.

What BIMI actually is

BIMI — Brand Indicators for Message Identification — is a standard that tells supporting inboxes to display your verified logo beside your messages. Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo and a growing list support it. You publish it as a DNS record, but the record is the last 5% of the work. BIMI is less a feature you enable and more a certificate of good standing: the inbox shows your logo only once it trusts that mail claiming to be from you really is.

The prerequisite nobody can skip: DMARC at enforcement

This is the whole story. BIMI will not display unless your domain is at DMARC enforcement — a policy of p=quarantine or p=reject at 100%. A p=none policy does not qualify, full stop. And to be at enforcement safely, your SPF and DKIM have to be passing and aligned for all your legitimate mail first, or you'll start dropping your own newsletters.

BIMI is a carrot. The vegetable is DMARC enforcement — and that's the part that actually protects you, by stopping anyone from spoofing your domain. Even if the logo never interests you, getting to p=reject is worth doing.

So the honest framing: don't pursue BIMI for a logo. Pursue DMARC enforcement because it shuts down domain spoofing and protects your deliverability, and let BIMI be the visible bonus you earn on the way.

The logo and the certificate (where the money is)

Two more requirements, and the second one costs real money:

• The logo must be an SVG Tiny PS file — a specific, restricted SVG profile, not just any SVG — square, under 32KB, hosted at a public HTTPS URL. Gmail wants it at least 96×96.
• The certificate. To actually show the logo, Gmail and Apple Mail want a certificate proving you own the mark. A VMC (Verified Mark Certificate) requires a registered trademark and is the only route to Gmail's blue verified checkmark. A CMC (Common Mark Certificate) accepts 12 months of continuous public logo use instead of a trademark — Gmail takes it, but Apple Mail generally wants a VMC. These certificates run into four figures a year, so this isn't free brand polish.

The record itself

Once the groundwork's done, the record is small. It lives at default._bimi.yourdomain as a TXT record:

v=BIMI1; l=https://yourdomain.com/bimi/logo.svg; a=https://yourdomain.com/bimi/vmc.pem

l= points at the logo, a= at the certificate. Drop a= if you don't have a certificate yet (some inboxes will still show the logo; the major ones won't).

The trap: it fails silently

Here's what makes BIMI maddening. When something's wrong — a policy not at enforcement, a logo that isn't valid SVG Tiny PS, a typo in the record — you get no error. You just get no logo, forever, with no clue why. One 2025 analysis found that over half of published BIMI records contained at least one error that prevented the logo from displaying. The senders almost certainly thought they were done.

So verify each layer independently: is DMARC really at enforcement, is the logo reachable and valid, is the record syntax correct. And keep verifying — a DMARC policy can get loosened in a "fix," a logo URL can 404 after a site migration, and your hard-won logo quietly vanishes. It's the same silent-drift pattern as a DMARC record that someone edits without thinking.

Our free site checker reports your DNS and email-authentication posture — SPF, DKIM, DMARC — so you can confirm the foundation BIMI stands on is actually solid before you spend on a certificate.