--- title: "DuoCircle AutoSPF vs. Valimail | DuoCircle" description: "How DuoCircle" image: "https://www.duocircle.com/images/og-default.png" canonical: "https://www.duocircle.com/resources/valimail-alternatives/" --- DuoCircle vs. # AutoSPF vs. Valimail How DuoCircle's AutoSPF compares to Valimail for automatic SPF management and the 10-DNS-lookup limit. AutoSPF was built because Valimail wouldn't scale down to a $4/mo customer's price point. The story of the operating loop. [ Talk to an Expert → ](/contact/) [ Visit AutoSPF ](https://autospf.com) Coverage match \~85% Price ratio \~25% Capability AutoSPF DuoCircle Valimail category leader Automatic SPF flattening Continuous upstream monitoring Change alerts + webhooks DMARC enforcement workflow partial Sender-source authentication partial Persistent free tier Free trial available partial Pricing on the website AutoSPF pricing Volume-based, published Pricing on the website. No quote-only gating. Valimail pricing Enterprise quote-only Verify against their current public posture. Capability comparison ## AutoSPF vs. Valimail, by capability Honest table. Where the leader covers more, we say so. Capability AutoSPF DuoCircle Valimail category leader Automatic SPF flattening Continuous upstream monitoring Change alerts + webhooks DMARC enforcement workflow partial Sender-source authentication partial Persistent free tier Free trial available partial Pricing on the website SMB-tier engagement Engineer on the support call partial ## DuoCircle AutoSPF vs. Valimail If you’ve researched SPF flattening or automatic SPF management, you’ve probably seen Valimail. They’re the original major name in the category, with deeper enterprise products that go beyond SPF into broader DMARC and email-authentication management. DuoCircle AutoSPF exists specifically because of Valimail. Here’s that story, then the honest comparison. ### The origin In the early years of DuoCircle’s outbound SMTP service, customers were breaking their SPF records due to the structure of AWS-hosted senders: too many `include:` references, too many DNS lookups, the 10-lookup limit blown and SPF failing for legitimate mail. We needed an SPF flattening solution and approached Valimail about a partnership. Two or three sales calls in, Valimail quoted $1,000 per month to fix the problem for one of our customers. That customer was paying us $4 per month. The math didn’t work for anyone except Valimail. So DuoCircle built AutoSPF instead. It now runs for a $16 billion IT services firm and tens of thousands of smaller organizations, all of which would have been priced out of the Valimail solution. ### What DuoCircle AutoSPF covers - **Automatic SPF management** that keeps you under the 10-DNS-lookup limit by flattening included senders into a single record DuoCircle hosts and updates - **Continuous monitoring** of upstream sender changes (e.g., Google Workspace updating its SPF includes) with automatic propagation - **Alerting and reporting** when sender changes affect your authentication posture - **Volume-based pricing** designed to work for SMB through enterprise ### What Valimail covers that AutoSPF doesn’t - **Broader DMARC and email-authentication suite** (Valimail Enforce, Valimail Monitor) beyond SPF specifically. AutoSPF is focused; Valimail covers more of the email-authentication stack as one product family. - **Enterprise-tier vendor relationships** with named delivery teams and dedicated CSMs at the largest customer tiers. - **Specific ecosystem integrations** with major sending platforms that have direct partnerships with Valimail. ### Pricing comparison - **Valimail pricing** is enterprise-tier for the broader suite. Their free DMARC Monitor product exists, but the SPF and full DMARC enforcement products are gated behind sales conversations and priced for organizations with budget for tier-one vendor commit. - **DuoCircle AutoSPF pricing** is on the product site, scales with sender complexity rather than firm size, and is dramatically less expensive than Valimail’s enterprise tiers. The 90/50 framing (about half the cost for the same SPF capability) understates the gap at smaller customer tiers, where AutoSPF can be running for under $5 per month while Valimail wouldn’t engage at any price. → **[Visit autospf.com](https://autospf.com/?utm%5Fsource=duocircle&utm%5Fmedium=capability&utm%5Fcampaign=cross%5Fsell)** for current pricing. ### When to choose Valimail - You’re a large enterprise with budget and procurement structure for a tier-one email-authentication suite - You need the broader Valimail products beyond SPF (Enforce, Monitor) as a coordinated stack - You have specific ecosystem integration requirements with sending platforms partnered with Valimail - Your CISO has bought into Valimail at enterprise commit levels ### When to choose DuoCircle AutoSPF - You need automatic SPF management specifically and don’t want to pay enterprise-suite prices to get it - You’re SMB through mid-market and Valimail’s pricing doesn’t fit - You want the rest of the DuoCircle authentication portfolio (DMARC Report, BIMI hosting, Mail Flow Monitoring) alongside SPF, all under one engineering team - You appreciate the original story: this product exists because we couldn’t make Valimail’s economics work for our customers [Talk to an Expert](/contact/) about your SPF setup. → **[Visit autospf.com](https://autospf.com/?utm%5Fsource=duocircle&utm%5Fmedium=capability&utm%5Fcampaign=cross%5Fsell)** for current pricing and signup. ## Ready to talk? Same-day response from someone technical. We tell you yes or no quickly. If yes, we get to work. [Talk to an Expert→](/contact/)[See what we make](/products/) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Organization","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/images/duocircle-logo.png"},"description":"DuoCircle is a portfolio of specialized email products covering protection, authentication, delivery, and routing. We deliver about 90% of category-leader capability at roughly half the price, backed by experts who own the outcome. 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