Email authentication versus email certification

Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on February 11, 2008

a certificateDiscovered today that there is still much confusion out there about the difference between authentication and certification. For those who share this confusion, here some quick easy-to-understand help...not the whole story, but enough to grasp what's going on.

Use the comments to expand the explanations, if you want to add anything.

Email authentication


Email authentication refers to some behind-the-scenes changes you can make to the administrative records concerning the source of your emails and/or the emails themselves.

These changes are encapsulated in technical authentication standards and, if implemented correctly, organizations receiving authenticated email can verify your identity and confirm that the email really does come from you or from someone authorized to send email on your behalf (such as your email marketing service).

There are no universal authentication standards in place. But some popular standards exist and are used by a growing number of ISPs, webmail services and others managing incoming email.

By authenticating your outgoing emails and thus making your identity clear and verifiable, you are also accepting accountability for those emails. As such, authentication is increasingly seen as evidence of a good email sender.

And not authenticating your emails is increasingly seen as evidence of a bad sender. As such, authentication can help ensure your emails get delivered.

However, verifying the email sender's identity does not in itself really say anything about that sender's actual email practices. So authenticating your emails does not guarantee your emails preferential treatment.

But it will help establish a good reputation with ISPs etc. and is often required before you can apply for any such preferential treatment.

Further reading:

Email certification


Email certification (often synonymous with email accreditation) is a third-party seal of approval for your emails. So unlike authentication, it does say you are a good emailer. However, an absence of certification does not imply you are a bad emailer.

Getting your email certified involves paying a fee to a third-party certifying agency and satisfying their certification requirements.

These requirements normally involve demonstrating that your email program and (sometimes) your organization meets various quality criteria, such as only sending opt-in email, using email authentication (!), attracting low spam complaints from your subscribers, and similar.

The actual form of the "seal of approval" varies from service to service, but essentially it gets you preferential treatment from those ISPs who recognize that seal.

So, for example, joining a particular certification program might mean your emails to certain webmail services are guaranteed delivery to the recipient's inbox.

Important aspects of certification:

1. There is no global certification program in place for email. The various private certification services each have their own arrangements with a select number of email partners.

2. It costs money to get certified. This may involve an application fee, annual fees and/or per email fees. So anyone considering certification needs to weigh up the costs against the likely benefits.

3. Certification is revoked if your email program no longer meets the certifying service's requirements.

Further reading:
Email certification and accreditation services

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