Check whether a domain is old enough — and configured enough — for cold outreach.

Brand-new domains and half-finished DNS are the two most common reasons cold email infrastructure stalls at readiness review. This checker reports registration age from public RDAP data alongside the auth-record baseline.

How it works

  • Registration date is looked up via RDAP, the public registry data protocol — no API key, nothing stored.
  • SPF, DKIM (common selectors), DMARC, and MX are checked over public DNS at the same time.
  • Domains registered fewer than 30 days ago are flagged as young; an unknown age is shown as unknown, not as a warning.

When to use it

  • Before buying inboxes or provisioning infrastructure on a just-registered domain.
  • When importing an existing client domain whose history you did not observe.
  • As a pre-check before running a full readiness report on a workspace.

Common failure cases

  • Sending cold volume from a domain registered days ago because DNS looked complete.
  • Treating an unknown RDAP age as a problem — some ccTLD registries simply do not publish it.
  • Skipping DMARC because SPF and DKIM pass individually.

Examples

What good and bad signals look like

Ready-looking domain

Registered 14 months ago, SPF + DKIM + DMARC + MX all present

Age and auth baseline pass. Readiness still needs SMTP, launch-gate, and placement evidence.

Young domain

Registered 6 days ago, no DMARC

Most operators warm new domains for weeks before meaningful cold volume. Fix DNS first.

What to do next

  • Fix missing records with the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC generators before anything else.
  • Plan how many domains you need with the domain capacity calculator.
  • Use a workspace readiness report before prospect traffic; this checklist is advisory, not launch approval.
Automate domain readiness

GTM Inboxes tracks domain age and DNS state as part of workspace readiness checks.

Related tools and workflows

Domain capacity calculator

Estimate how many sending domains your volume needs.

Email blacklist checker

Check the IP reputation side of the same launch decision.

DNS & auth checker

Dig into the individual auth records this checklist summarizes.

Cold email inbox calculator

Turn a DNS or authentication check into a conservative inbox-capacity plan.

FAQ

How old should a domain be before cold email?

There is no universal rule, but very new domains carry elevated filtering risk, and GTM Inboxes' own readiness checks flag domains under 30 days. Many operators warm new domains for several weeks first.

Why is the registration age sometimes unknown?

Age comes from public RDAP registry data. Most gTLDs publish it; some country-code registries do not, and the tool reports unknown rather than guessing.