ShieldMarc vs DMARCLY
A straight comparison for UK MSPs weighing a budget US tool against a UK-owned platform.
ShieldMarc is a UK-owned, EU-hosted alternative to DMARCLY for DMARC monitoring, with flat annual pricing at £0, £49 and £99 per month instead of DMARCLY's 2, 8, 15 and 200-domain tier steps. DMARCLY is an independent US vendor (Seattle, WA) that publishes every price including its overage rates — genuinely rare in this market — and its top tier is aggressively cheap, so for a very small or a very large fixed estate it deserves a fair look. Where ShieldMarc wins is mid-size economics (25 domains for £49/mo annual), a full year of data retention on every plan, whole-domain monitoring beyond email authentication, a proprietary threat model plus Claude AI on paid tiers, and a UK-owned / EU-hosted default with no US CLOUD Act exposure. Figures below are from DMARCLY's public pricing page, verified July 2026. DMARCLY publishes in USD with monthly billing only, converted to GBP at approximately £1 = $1.25; verify directly at dmarcly.com/pricing.
Flat pricing beats domain step-functions
DMARCLY's tiers cover 2, 8, 15 and then 200 domains: approximately £14/mo (Professional), £32/mo (Growth), £55/mo (Business) and £159/mo (Enterprise); list prices are USD, monthly billing only, converted at roughly £1 = $1.25. A 20-domain estate means the ~£159/mo Enterprise tier or per-domain overages on Business. ShieldMarc Professional covers 25 domains for £49/mo annual and MSP covers 100 domain slots for £99/mo, with expansion buckets at £39.99/mo.
A year of data on every plan
DMARCLY keeps 2 months of history on its entry tier, 4 and 6 months on its mid tiers, and caps at 1 year even on the ~£159/mo Enterprise tier. ShieldMarc keeps 1 year of DMARC reports, changelogs and monitoring history on every plan, including the free Starter tier. Trend analysis and audit evidence need history.
Whole-domain scope plus threat model + Claude AI
DMARCLY is deliberately email-authentication-only: no SSL, DNS health, uptime, domain expiry or lookalike monitoring, and no AI features advertised beyond automatic categorisation of unidentified senders. Paid ShieldMarc plans bundle all of those and run every DMARC report row through our proprietary threat model, with a frontier Anthropic Claude model reasoning on top, on demand only.
Pricing and plan limits (verified July 2026)
| Feature | DMARCLY | ShieldMarc |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | None: 14-day free trial on every tier, plus free SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI and MTA-STS checkers | Starter: 1 domain, 10,000 messages/mo, 20 free tools, 1 year retention, permanently free |
| First paid tier DMARCLY genuinely wins on sticker price for a 1-2 domain estate | Professional: ~£14/mo (US$17.99, monthly billing only), 2 domains, 100k messages/mo, 1 user, 2 months history | Professional: £49/mo annual, 25 domains, 1,000,000 messages/mo, 5 users, 1 year retention |
| First-paid cost per domain | ~£7.20/domain/mo (2 domains) | ~£1.96/domain/mo (25 domains) |
| Cost for a 20-domain estate | Business (15 domains, ~£55/mo) plus per-domain overages at ~£0.80/mo each, or Enterprise at ~£159/mo | Professional: £49/mo annual, with headroom to 25 domains |
| Cost at 100 domains | ~£159/mo (Enterprise is the first tier above 15 domains) | £99/mo (MSP, annual) |
| Cost at 200 domains Credit where due: DMARCLY narrowly wins on raw price at its full top-tier capacity | ~£159/mo (Enterprise includes up to 200 domains) | ~£179/mo (MSP plus two £39.99 expansion buckets, which also add 10M messages) |
| Annual billing option | Not published: monthly pricing only | Yes: Professional £49/mo annual (£69 monthly), MSP £99/mo annual (£129 monthly) |
| Free trial | 14 days on all plans | 30 days on every paid plan, no card required |
| Data retention | 2 months (Professional), 4 (Growth), 6 (Business), 1 year maximum (Enterprise) | 1 year on every plan, including free |
| Users included | 1 (Professional), 3 (Growth), 5 (Business); unlimited only on Enterprise (~£159/mo) | 5 on Professional, unlimited on MSP at £99/mo |
| Overage and expansion pricing DMARCLY deserves credit for publishing its overage rates at all | Published: ~£0.80 per extra domain, ~£8 per extra Safe SPF domain, ~£8 per extra 1M messages over 5M; volume overruns trigger an automatic temporary bump to the next plan | +50 domain slots and +5 million messages for £39.99/mo (published); no hard message cap, 3-month grace, your invoice never changes without a conversation first |
| What forces an upgrade | Domain caps at 2, 8 and 15; Safe SPF caps; API and SAML SSO locked to the ~£159/mo Enterprise tier | Nothing until 100 domain slots; beyond that, published £39.99/mo expansion buckets |
Features and depth
| Feature | DMARCLY | ShieldMarc |
|---|---|---|
| Analysis engine Paid tiers only, on-demand only. We combine both. | No AI features advertised; automatic categorisation of unidentified senders | Proprietary threat model + Claude AI |
| Forensic (RUF) reports A genuine DMARCLY plus: some competitors gate these behind higher tiers | Included on every plan, including the cheapest | Full RUA and RUF on all plans, including forensic samples |
| SPF flattening DMARCLY's automation is ahead today; ShieldMarc has no per-domain caps or fees | Safe SPF automated flattening, live today: 1 domain (Growth), 2 (Business), 4 (Enterprise), ~£8/domain/mo beyond; not available on Professional | SPF flattener included on all paid plans with no per-domain cap or fee; auto-maintained Dynamic SPF is on the roadmap |
| Subdomain policy (sp=) detection | Subdomain detection on all plans | sp= scored independently, weaker-than-p flagged as a distinct control failure |
| Lookalike domain scanning | Not offered | All plans, including free |
| SSL, DNS health, DNSSEC, CAA, domain expiry and uptime monitoring | Not offered: deliberately email-authentication-only (DNS timeline of its monitored records only) | All included on paid tiers |
| MTA-STS and TLS-RPT | Record generation and checking tools plus TLS report ingestion; MTA-STS policy hosting is customer-managed per its own guides | MTA-STS and TLS-RPT monitoring with TLS report ingestion on paid tiers; policy hosting is customer-managed too |
| BIMI | Record generation and checking tools on all plans (no hosted BIMI or VMC handling) | Not a current focus; we do not ship hosted BIMI |
| Blacklist and IP reputation monitoring | IP reputation monitoring on all plans; blacklist monitoring (Spamhaus ZEN, SpamCop, Barracuda, PSBL) from the Business tier | IP reputation and ASN signals feed our threat model on every report row; no dedicated blacklist monitor |
| MSP tooling | MSP dashboard to switch between client accounts; no white-label option or reseller/partner programme published | MSP plan: 100 domain slots, unlimited team members, brand TLD grouping (alternate TLDs count as one slot), published expansion buckets |
| Free tools and education | Free SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI and MTA-STS checkers and an extensive setup-guide knowledge base | 20 free tools, 4 with plain-English AI explanations |
Data, hosting and privacy
| Feature | DMARCLY | ShieldMarc |
|---|---|---|
| Company base | US-based (Seattle, WA), independent vendor | UK owned and run |
| Default hosting | US (Fremont, CA) for dmarcly.com accounts; Frankfurt, Germany for eu.dmarcly.com accounts, per its privacy policy; cloud provider not named | EU hosted by default, UK hosted on request; we run our own stack |
| Subject to US CLOUD Act | US operator, so the CLOUD Act plausibly applies, including to data on the Frankfurt instance, since the operator is a US entity | No (UK based, EU hosted) |
| PII stored | Standard SaaS profile | Minimal by design: account emails, audit log, rare RUF headers |
| Third-party certifications | No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 published or advertised as of July 2026; GDPR compliance is self-declared with a downloadable DPA; 2FA on all plans | Cyber Essentials, then SOC 2/ISO 27001 on the roadmap; certification-grade controls documented on our Trust page |
| Public trust page and legal transparency | No published trust or status page; the site's terms-of-service link returned an error when we checked (July 2026) and no legal entity name is published on its site | Trust page documenting security posture, tenant isolation, audit logging and incident response |
| Support | Email support on Professional, live chat from Growth; no phone support published | Support tickets on all plans; dedicated account manager on Enterprise |
Conclusion
Where ShieldMarc has an edge
- Flat, predictable pricing for real-world estates: 25 domains for £49/mo annual, or 100 domain slots for £99/mo. No 2 to 8 to 15 to 200 domain step-function, so a 20-domain MSP pays £49/mo rather than ~£159/mo Enterprise or per-domain overages.
- Annual billing discount and a permanent free tier. DMARCLY publishes monthly-only pricing and offers a 14-day trial instead of a free plan.
- A full year of data retention on every plan, including free. DMARCLY starts at 2 months and caps at 1 year even on its ~£159/mo Enterprise tier.
- Paid-plan AI analysis combines our proprietary threat model with a frontier Anthropic Claude model, on demand only. DMARCLY advertises no AI features.
- Full stack in one dashboard on paid tiers: DMARC, SPF, DKIM, SSL, DNS, DNSSEC, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT, CAA, domain expiry, uptime and lookalike monitoring. DMARCLY covers email authentication only, with no lookalike or typosquat detection.
- SPF flattening included on all paid plans with no per-domain cap, versus Safe SPF limited to 1, 2 or 4 domains with ~£8/domain/mo beyond.
- UK owned, EU hosted by default, UK hosted on request. No US CLOUD Act exposure, and unlimited team members on MSP versus DMARCLY's 1, 3 and 5-seat caps below Enterprise.
Where DMARCLY stacks up
- Fully transparent pricing at every tier, including published overage rates, with no 'contact sales' gatekeeping anywhere. That is rare in this market and deserves genuine credit.
- An exceptionally cheap top tier: ~£159/mo (US$199) buys up to 200 domains, 5 million messages and unlimited users. Above 150 domains, where ShieldMarc MSP needs a second expansion bucket (~£179/mo at 200 domains), DMARCLY works out cheaper, if DMARC-only scope is all you need.
- Forensic (failure) reports on every plan, including the cheapest, where some competitors gate them behind higher tiers.
- Safe SPF automated SPF flattening is live today (from the Growth tier, capped at 1, 2 or 4 domains). ShieldMarc's auto-maintained Dynamic SPF is still on the roadmap.
- An EU data residency option via its Frankfurt instance (eu.dmarcly.com), unusual for a vendor of this size, though the operator remains a US company.
- Strong free checkers (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, MTA-STS) and an extensive setup-guide knowledge base, and it names enterprise brands such as Britannica, Investopedia, Patreon and Nissan as users on its homepage (the vendor's own claim).
Frequently asked questions
What is an alternative to DMARCLY for DMARC monitoring?
ShieldMarc is a UK-owned, EU-hosted alternative to DMARCLY. It parses the same DMARC aggregate and forensic reports but keeps a full year of data on every plan (DMARCLY keeps 2 months on its entry tier and a maximum of 1 year on its top tier), and bundles SSL, DNS, DNSSEC, MTA-STS, TLS-RPT, CAA, uptime, domain expiry and lookalike monitoring alongside DMARC, with a proprietary threat model plus Claude AI analysis on demand on paid tiers. Pricing is flat: free on Starter for 1 domain, £49 per month annual for 25 domains on Professional, and £99 per month annual for 100 domain slots on MSP. Other alternatives include dmarcian, EasyDMARC, Valimail and PowerDMARC; ShieldMarc differs by being UK owned with EU hosting by default and UK hosting available on request.
Is ShieldMarc cheaper than DMARCLY?
It depends on your domain count, and we will be straight about it. For 1 to 8 domains DMARCLY is cheaper on sticker price: its Professional tier is approximately £14 per month (US$17.99, monthly billing only) for 2 domains and Growth is around £32 per month for up to 8. From about 9 domains ShieldMarc pulls ahead on annual billing: DMARCLY's Business tier is ~£55 per month for 15 domains, against ShieldMarc Professional at £49 per month for 25 domains and 1 million messages, and anything above 15 domains on DMARCLY means the ~£159 per month Enterprise tier or per-domain overages. At 100 domains ShieldMarc MSP is £99 per month against ~£159; only above 150 domains, where ShieldMarc needs a second expansion bucket, does DMARCLY work out slightly cheaper (~£159 versus ~£179 at 200 domains). ShieldMarc also includes a permanent free tier, a year of retention on every plan, and SSL, DNS, uptime and lookalike monitoring that DMARCLY does not offer at any price.
Which is better for UK MSPs: DMARCLY or ShieldMarc?
DMARCLY has a genuine MSP dashboard for switching between client accounts, but the economics squeeze growing MSPs: any client base above 15 domains means its ~£159 per month Enterprise tier, seats are capped at 1, 3 and 5 users below Enterprise, report history is 2 to 6 months on the tiers most MSPs would start on, and no white-label option or reseller/partner programme is published. ShieldMarc's MSP plan is built for the job: 100 domain slots for £99 per month annual, unlimited team members, brand TLD grouping so alternate TLDs of the same client count as one slot, SSL, DNS, uptime and lookalike monitoring across every client domain, and published £39.99 per month expansion buckets. Being UK owned and EU hosted also simplifies DPIAs and client due diligence for UK books of business. DMARCLY remains a reasonable budget pick for a fixed estate of very few, or a great many, domains.
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