The first step of BIMI became free this week. On 24 September Red Sift released BIMI Maker, a tool that checks whether your logo meets the format mailbox providers accept and generates the file for you, in about a minute and with no signup. The certificate that makes most inboxes show the logo is still paid. This is what each provider shows, what it costs, and what the logo moves once it is there.
What Red Sift released
BIMI Maker takes a logo and turns it into the SVG Tiny PS file that BIMI requires. Red Sift says around 50,000 domains publish a BIMI record and fewer than 6,500 have a valid certificate behind it. It does not say where the count comes from, so treat it as their estimate. Rahul Powar, Red Sift’s CEO, and Nick Schafer of Sinch Mailgun are quoted in the launch.
What each mailbox provider shows
| Provider | What it needs to show your logo |
|---|---|
| Gmail | A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) or a Common Mark Certificate (CMC). With a CMC the logo appears without the blue checkmark. A record that only points to an SVG shows nothing. Google, updated 24 Sep 2026 |
| Apple Mail | A VMC. Apple’s pages mention “other forms of BIMI Evidence Documents” but do not name the CMC. Apple |
| Yahoo and AOL | No certificate, for bulk senders with enough reputation. Yahoo Sender Hub |
| Microsoft Outlook | Does not display BIMI. BIMI Group |
Before any of this, BIMI needs DMARC at enforcement, p=quarantine or p=reject, on the sending domain (BIMI Group implementation guide).
What it costs, and for how long
A VMC needs a registered trademark; a CMC needs a logo in public use for about twelve months. List prices on the certificate authorities’ own pages: Sectigo from $1,350 a year for a VMC and $990 for a CMC; GlobalSign $1,450 and $1,035. A certificate lasts at most 398 days, so it is a yearly cost with a yearly renewal. Entrust’s certificate business, VMCs included, moved to Sectigo in 2025.
What BIMI gives you
Your logo next to your name in Gmail and Apple Mail, and in Gmail a blue checkmark when the certificate is a VMC. It is still rare: by Red Sift’s estimate, fewer than 6,500 domains have a certificate behind their record. And it can only be earned with DMARC at enforcement on the sending domain, the part that stops anyone else from sending mail in your name. BIMI is the visible reward for having authentication right.
What to expect in the numbers
The figure that travels with this launch, 39% more opens, comes from a 2021 survey by Red Sift and Entrust in which 626 UK consumers said how likely they were to open an email with a logo; the 400 US respondents in the same survey gave 21%. It measures intention, not sends. We measured it on the two senders we run with a certificate, a consumer-goods brand and a gift brand, comparing the inboxes that show the logo with a control that does not: Microsoft in one case, the same company’s brands without a certificate in the other. The effect was much more modest than any survey: between no change and a single-digit rise in clicks, inside the normal month-to-month variation, and no rise in opens. We read that as a logo that builds recognition and trust over time, not a switch that moves a campaign.
Our perspective
Start with the free step this week: run your logo through BIMI Maker and confirm DMARC is at enforcement on every domain you send from. Then decide on the certificate as a yearly brand investment, the way you would decide on a trademark, not as a campaign tactic. If you want to know what it does for your list, measure it against something that does not show the logo, such as another of your brands or Microsoft, rather than against last month. And put the renewal in the calendar the day the certificate arrives: when it lapses, the logo simply stops appearing and nothing tells you. We have seen it happen.
The BIMI checklist has the DNS record, the order of the steps and the renewal date field on one page. If you want to know where your domain stands before you start, the Free Domain Health Check takes a minute.