Validity goes behind a Paywall

Validity recently announced that their Universal Feedback Loop ARF reports were no longer a free service but going to be a paid subscription. They are replacing their individual ARF reports with a free aggregate report today.

What is Validity ARF Reports?

Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) is standard that allows Inbox Providers to provide Feedback or Recipient Complaint information to legitimate email senders. The data contained in a ARF report can be as limited as the subject of the email and number of complaints or may be highly detailed information, like:

  • Date and Time of the Complaint
  • Date and Time of the Email Sent
  • Subject of the email
  • Email Addresses Unsubscribing
  • Email Addresses Complaining
  • Email Addresses Failing
  • Type of Failure or Complaint

However, Validity ARF reports only contain minimally actionable information: Subject, Date and Type of Complaint and email header with obfuscated recipient data.

Who does the change affect?

MxToolbox Delivery Center customers with a Validity Feedback Loop/Complaint integration will lose access to new Validity data on September 22, 2023. MxToolbox is investigating the value of integrating with their free aggregate version of the Universal Feedback Loop systems or terminate the integration with Validity.

Our product team is constantly evaluating the potential for new integrations to ensure that our Recipient Complaints feature provides detailed, actionable insight to our customers. While Validity ARF reports contained some actionable insight when free, the impact when compared to DMARC data and other sources of Feedback Loops will be minor to most customers.

MxToolbox’s Stance

MxToolbox has always been an advocate for improving email delivery and an early adopter of DMARC and Feedback Loop aggregation technology. Feedback Loops were intended to be used to improve the quality of email and reduce the quantity of unwanted email, so, placing Feedback Loop and Complaint information behind a paywall seems like the wrong direction. The additional costs will be especially rough for small-to-medium businesses to bear.

MxToolbox Free Email Delivery Tools

MxToolbox has always been a provider of Free Email Delivery Tools. From our early days Blacklist Lookups and Monitors have been free to use. We continue to expand our suite of free tools to help businesses improve email delivery.