Every few months someone asks why their newsletter suddenly lands in Junk at Outlook, or why Gmail started rejecting a chunk of a campaign. Half the time the copy is fine. The domain setup is not.
MAGY sender compliance is the shared bar from Microsoft, Apple, Gmail, and Yahoo. It used to be optional guidance. Miss it now and providers may reject the message before anyone sees a tab.
TL;DR: MAGY in one page
- Own the From domain. Stop sending as a free Gmail or Yahoo address. Buy a domain and send as yourself.
- Authenticate with alignment. SPF and DKIM must line up with the From domain. Publish DMARC so providers know what to do when checks fail.
- One-click unsubscribe. Marketing mail needs List-Unsubscribe headers your ESP sets. A buried footer link alone is not enough.
- Keep complaints tiny. Google wants spam rates under 0.1%. Crossing 0.3% regularly is how you get throttled or blocked.
- Watch the dashboards. Use Google Postmaster Tools for Gmail. Fix DNS once, then watch reputation and complaint trends.
What to watch out for: perfect DNS with a bought list still fails. Authentication gets you in the door. Wanted mail keeps you there.
What MAGY compliance covers
MAGY is shorthand for the four big consumer inboxes most of your list lives in:
- Microsoft (Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live)
- Apple (iCloud Mail)
- Google (Gmail)
- Yahoo (Yahoo Mail, AOL, and related properties)
Each published their own sender docs. Own your domain, authenticate with From-domain alignment, publish DMARC, make unsubscribe easy, and stop mailing people who mark you as spam.
If you want provider-specific rabbit holes, start with Gmail deliverability, Yahoo and AOL deliverability, Outlook deliverability, and iCloud deliverability. This post is the shared checklist.
SpamResource keeps a solid public MAGY roundup if you want another operator's notes. Below is how we tell teams to think about it when they are stuck in a support ticket.
Send as a domain you own
You cannot build a stable sender identity on someone else's free mailbox. yourname@gmail.com as a newsletter From address is dead for serious sending. Authentication and DMARC killed that pattern.
Mailbox providers need to recognize you. Shared platform defaults that rewrite your From address can paper over a broken setup for a day. They do not build trust over months. Buy the domain. Point DNS at your ESP. Send as hello@yourbrand.com or a subdomain you control.
Same rule if you send from Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for day-to-day mail and an ESP for campaigns. Authenticate both. Providers do not care that marketing sits on a different tool.
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC with alignment
Think of authentication as ID at the door.
SPF lists which servers may send for your domain. For corporate mailboxes on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, get SPF right on the root domain. For many ESPs, you do not bolt their include into SPF unless they tell you to. Follow your platform's DNS guide instead of stacking random includes.
DKIM signs the message so the receiving server can prove it was not altered and that your domain authorized it. Platform "default DKIM" is not enough when the authenticated domain does not match your From domain. Alignment is the requirement. The DKIM or SPF domain has to match the From domain, not some shared ESP hostname.
DMARC tells receivers what to do when authentication fails, and MAGY requires it. A minimum p=none record meets Google and Yahoo while you monitor. Stronger policies (p=quarantine, then p=reject) protect the domain from spoofing once you trust the data. One DMARC record at the apex. One SPF record at the apex. Multiple DKIM selectors are fine when you send from more than one platform.
If DMARC still feels fuzzy, read our DMARC guide. Authentication gets the message accepted. It does not force the Primary inbox. Unwanted mail still lands in spam. That is a reputation problem, covered in why emails go to spam.
One-click unsubscribe is a header job
Google and Yahoo call out RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe handling for bulk marketing mail. Microsoft expects easy unsubscribe and honest subjects too.
Here is the part people mix up. The visible unsubscribe link in the footer still matters. Do not hide it. Do not make it white-on-white. But the compliance piece providers check is mostly in the message headers. Your ESP should set List-Unsubscribe and one-click where required. You do not hand-roll that in the HTML body.
If someone clicks unsubscribe, honor it fast. Slow or buried opt-out is how your spam rate climbs.
Complaint rates and list hygiene
Google's guidance is blunt. Keep spam complaint rates under 0.1%. If you regularly sit above 0.3%, expect pain. Microsoft tells you to use accurate subjects, avoid deceptive headers, and only mail people who opted in.
Bought lists fail this. So do third-party "leads" and cold scraped addresses. Even a clean signup list fails if you send too often, or send something people never asked for.
Process bounces. User-unknown and mailbox-full addresses are not a forever retry queue. Keep mailing dead addresses and you look like a bad sender at every provider, including Microsoft.
Permission is an engagement signal. Cold mail reads as noise to MAGY, even when a lawyer could defend the signup form.
Watch Google Postmaster Tools
Sign up for Google Postmaster Tools and verify your sending domain. You get domain reputation, spam rate, and related feedback for Gmail traffic. It will not tell you much about Yahoo or Outlook, but Gmail volume is usually large enough to catch problems early.
Microsoft's SNDS portal is more useful if you are on dedicated IPs. Shared-IP senders get less out of it. For a quick authentication smoke test, tools like AboutMy.Email are useful before you blast a campaign.
Green DNS checks are step one. Then watch complaint rate and domain reputation after real sends. That is where most "we fixed DNS and still go to spam" tickets live.
Microsoft's May 2025 enforcement
Google and Yahoo started enforcing bulk-sender rules through 2024. Microsoft joined with a hard date.
As of May 5, 2025, Microsoft rejects non-compliant bulk mail to consumer domains like Outlook, Hotmail, and Live. Bulk means about 5,000 or more messages per day to Microsoft, counted across your domain, including bounces. Early messaging talked about Junk routing. The updated guidance moved to rejection.
If you already meet Gmail and Yahoo authentication and unsubscribe rules, Microsoft is mostly the same homework. Still check their details, especially DMARC strength and valid From/Reply-To behavior. We covered that separately in Microsoft's 2025 sender requirements.
Apple's public docs are shorter, but the same habits apply. Authenticate the domain you send as, keep wanted mail wanted, and do not treat iCloud as a free pass because the PDF is thinner. Volume thresholds are looser or unstated for Apple. Comply anyway if you send at any real scale.
Small senders still should comply
Google and Microsoft define bulk around 5,000 messages a day to their networks. Yahoo talks about bulk without a crisp public number. Apple does not draw a volume line the same way.
If you send only a few hundred a day, you can sit under some thresholds. You still want the same setup. Inbox systems use it to decide you are a real sender. Waiting until you cross 5,000 is how teams scramble after the first rejection wave.
Predictability still wins after compliance
MAGY gets authentication and one-click unsubscribe in place. Inbox placement after that still depends on how predictable you look.
Separate From addresses by mail type. Keep volume steady. Do not train a personal address with promo blasts. We wrote that up in predicting inbox placement. Compliance gets you accepted. Predictability decides whether you stay out of junk.
Takeaways
Do this once, then maintain it:
- Send from a domain you own.
- Set SPF, DKIM, and DMARC with From-domain alignment. One SPF record. One DMARC record. DKIM for every platform that sends as you.
- Confirm your ESP emits one-click List-Unsubscribe on marketing mail.
- Keep spam complaints under 0.1%. Suppress bounces. Stop mailing cold or purchased lists.
- Verify the domain in Google Postmaster Tools and watch spam rate after each ramp.
In Bento, open the DNS dashboard and confirm the records are green, then use separate Authors for transactional vs marketing From addresses. Questions? Ask in Discord.
