BIMI Record Generator

BIMI: putting your logo in the inbox

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a specification from the AuthIndicators Working Group — a consortium that includes Google, Yahoo, Fastmail, Verizon, Mailchimp and Validity — that lets supporting email clients display a brand's logo next to authenticated messages. The user-visible payoff: instead of a generic grey avatar, recipients see the real brand mark in Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Apple Mail (iOS 16+) and Fastmail. The strategic payoff: BIMI is gated on strict authentication, so deploying it both signals legitimacy and squeezes out phishing impersonations.

A BIMI deployment has four ingredients:

• DMARC enforced at the organizational domain with p=quarantine or p=reject (a p=none policy disqualifies the domain).
• An SVG Tiny 1.2 PS logo (the Portable/Secure profile: no scripts, no animations, no external resources, square aspect ratio, under 32 KB).
• A Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) or the newer Common Mark Certificate (CMC) issued by Entrust or DigiCert, proving registered trademark ownership (USPTO, INPI, EUIPO, etc.). Pricing typically lands between USD 1,500 and 3,000 per logo per year.
• A DNS TXT record at default._bimi.example.com pointing to the SVG and the certificate.

The DNS record format

default._bimi  IN  TXT  "v=BIMI1; l=https://example.com/logo.svg; a=https://example.com/vmc.pem"

The v=BIMI1 tag identifies the version. l= is the HTTPS URL of the SVG Tiny PS logo. a= is the URL of the VMC/CMC certificate chain in PEM format — required by Gmail and Apple Mail, optional by some clients during the rollout phase. The selector name (here default) appears as the BIMI-Selector: header on the outgoing message; senders can use alternate selectors like brand_red for campaign-specific logos.

SVG Tiny PS constraints

The logo must conform to SVG Tiny 1.2 Portable/Secure (PS), an Adobe-authored profile that forbids scripts, animations, foreign objects, external references and CSS. The root must declare baseProfile="tiny-ps" and the viewBox must be square. Most brands re-export from Illustrator using the "SVG Tiny 1.2" preset and then run the result through a BIMI-specific validator (bimigroup.org/svg-validator) to catch leftover attributes that the profile rejects.

Adoption timeline

Yahoo Mail was the early adopter (2019). Gmail rolled out BIMI support in mid-2021 (logo + VMC required). Apple Mail joined with iOS 16 / macOS Ventura in 2022. Fastmail supports it in their web client. In Brazil, large banks (Itaú, Bradesco, Nubank) and retailers like Magazine Luiza have rolled out BIMI to reduce phishing impersonation against their customer bases.

FAQ

Is the USD 1,500/year cost worth it? For high-volume consumer brands and financial institutions, generally yes — the deliverability lift, the brand recall in the inbox, and the phishing-reduction signal pay for the VMC quickly. For a 50-employee SaaS, the math is harder.

Can I deploy BIMI without paying for a VMC? Gmail and Apple Mail require a VMC or CMC issued by Entrust or DigiCert. Without one, the SVG is published but no logo is displayed. There is no free path through major providers today.

Can I skip DMARC? No. DMARC at p=quarantine or p=reject on the organizational domain is a hard prerequisite. p=none means BIMI is silently ignored. This is the entire anti-impersonation argument.

Why is a registered trademark required? The VMC issuer verifies trademark ownership with USPTO, INPI or another national office before signing the certificate. The CMC variant (2023+) accepts unregistered logos but Gmail downgrades its visibility, so most brands still pursue a full VMC.