Use Email Deliverability Test to Boost Your Marketing Ops

Email marketers have to jump through a lot of hoops to ensure their messages successfully land in subscribers’ inboxes. When emails land in the spam folder, it’s a huge missed opportunity. But this issue is fixable — there are ways to achieve consistent inbox placement.

Performing email deliverability tests plays a pivotal role in this process, helping you optimize your email campaigns.

Spam filters today are highly intelligent and evolved; of all e-mails sent in 2022, nearly 49% were identified as spam. So, it’s going to take a lot of diligence and testing to ensure your emails do actually land in your customer’s inbox.

By evaluating various parameters, an email deliverability test can:

Boost email delivery rates,
Increase open rates,
Improve email marketing conversion rates,

If you’re constantly asking yourself why your emails are going to spam, this guide contains the answers you seek. We will explain how these tests can transform email performance for you and help you fine-tune your campaign deliverability rates.

Finally, we’re going to give you the ultimate play-by-play guide to take your email marketing chops to the next level.

What is Email Deliverability?

We define email deliverability as the ability of an email to reach the intended recipient’s inbox successfully.

High email deliverability is the ultimate goal for senders, as it signifies their messages consistently reach the inbox rather than being exiled to the spam folder or being undelivered.

Achieving strong email deliverability relies on numerous factors, which include:

Your sender reputation,
The quality of email content,
Implementation of security protocols,
The use of SSL in email transmission,
Compliance with regulations such as the CAN-SPAM Act.

Of these, your sender reputation plays a pivotal role, as it’s a trust metric ESPs (and ISPs) assign to you to assess your credibility and legitimacy.

How to Check Your Email Deliverability

Inbox placement is like a letter being delivered to a physical mailbox. Simply put, it’s whether your email reaches the intended recipient’s inbox, rather than being diverted to the spam folder or lost altogether.

To check deliverability of email campaigns, there are automated tools and manual checks to analyze the various factors influencing deliverability. The goal of these email test deliverability checks is to understand the percentage of your emails actually being seen and engaged with by your audience.

How Do You Measure Email Deliverability?

Email deliverability is measured by assessing the percentage of emails reaching recipients’ inboxes, not spam folders.

You should simultaneously measure metrics such as spam complaint rate and bounce rate. Tools such as Mxtoolbox and GlockApps can be helpful; they analyze sender reputation, authentication records, and content.

Monitoring engagement metrics like open and click-through rates also indirectly indicates good deliverability. Manually testing with seed lists can supplement automated analyses, providing a comprehensive view of your email performance.

If you’re wondering, how do I test my email deliverability, we answer that next!

Is There a Way to Test Email Deliverability?

There are several ways to test email deliverability.

You can use an email deliverability testing tool — such as MxToolbox and Mail-Tester — to analyze your email’s journey and identify potential issues potentially causing it to land in spam folders. These tools often examine factors like your sender reputation, email authentication, and email content.

The manual method involves sending a test deliverability email to various accounts and observing where they land, though this is time-consuming and less comprehensive than automated tools. You can also inspect email headers for authentication results and potential red flags, but this requires technical knowledge.

What is an Email Deliverability Test?

An email deliverability test is a thorough evaluation of factors influencing whether an email reaches the recipient’s inbox. It evaluates various aspects to measure the likelihood of successfully delivering your email.

By identifying potential issues and optimizing these key aspects, the test ensures your emails are not flagged as spam and consistently reach the recipients on your email lists. There are various email deliverability services available online to help you with this task.

These tests are crucial for marketers as they empower you to navigate the complex landscape of spam filters and email service provider algorithms. Ultimately, deliverability tests can guide you toward maximizing the ROI of all types of email campaigns.

How Do You Test Email Deliverability?

Email deliverability testing is a systematic process to evaluate whether your emails successfully reach recipient inboxes.

Professional marketers and email administrators execute deliverability testing through multiple technical methods:

Specialized deliverability platforms: Services such as GlockApps, Litmus, or Mail-Tester send test emails across multiple ISPs and analyze delivery success rates.
Authentication analysis: They implement DMARC reports and monitoring to track authentication results and identify potential spoofing issues.
Header analysis: Email senders study email headers using tools like MxToolbox.
Reputation analysis: They conduct IP reputation checks to ensure sending servers aren’t blacklisted.
Seed lists: They employ seed list testing, where test emails are sent to a controlled group of email addresses across different providers.
Campaign reports: Examining comprehensive email analytics and monitoring bounce rates, spam complaints, and engagement metrics can reveal deliverability trends.
Spam testing: Perform content analysis using spam-checking tools to identify potential trigger words or formatting issues.

How to Test My Email Deliverability?

Right now, you’re probably curious to check if your emails are landing in inboxes.

Here’s a simple approach you can follow:

First, send yourself a test email. Forward it to accounts you have with different providers — Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo — and see where it lands. It could be the primary inbox, promotions, or spam.
Next, try Mail-Tester.com. Send an email to their special address and get an instant deliverability score with personalized tips.
For the third step, ask friends to check their spam folders for your messages and report back. Their feedback provides real-world confirmation.
For ongoing monitoring, consider creating a few free accounts with major email providers solely for testing purposes.
Ensure your sender information is complete. Make sure you’ve added a proper email sender name and reply-to address matching your domain.
Finally, check your bounce notifications. They often contain helpful details about what went wrong and how to fix it.

Test Email Deliverability Rate for Free

We bet you’re curious to know how to test email deliverability now! We’ve listed steps below, but before you begin, remember to test your email deliverability at different times of the day.

Also, ensure you run your emails through a spam checker before you send them.

Here’s how to test email deliverability free:

Set up your seed list: A seed list is a list of valid email addresses you operate. You can use these addresses to test deliverability without sending emails to your real email marketing subscribers. The best way to create a seed list is to sign up for new email accounts with major email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.).
Send a test email: Now that you have your seed list set up, run a deliverability email test by sending a message to your addresses. Be sure to include all of the elements you would typically include in a regular email, such as a subject line, preheader text, body content, and images. Between HTML vs plain text emails, the latter typically has better deliverability, so maybe send an all-text email first.
Check your results: It’s time to examine the results and evaluate email performance. There are a few different ways to do this — one option is to manually check all your email inboxes and see how many of your test emails were delivered. Another option is to use the online tools mentioned in the table below.
Analyze your results: Here’s the fun part! Analyzing the results will tell you how good or bad your deliverability rates are. The three metrics you need to pay attention to are the number of emails were delivered to the inbox (inbox placement rate), the emails that went to spam, and the number of emails that weren’t delivered at all.

Testing your email deliverability regularly is a good way to verify your emails are reaching your subscribers’ inboxes. Remember to periodically check your domain reputation as well.

How Email Deliverability Check Helps You

An email deliverability check is a great way to get started on resolving problems with inbox placement.

The check can help:

Identify and resolve technical issues: It reveals misconfigurations in SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, preventing emails from being flagged as spam.
Fix your sender reputation: By pinpointing and correcting issues, it helps build a positive sender reputation, leading to better inbox placement.
Reduce bounce rates and spam complaints: It helps understand why emails are bouncing or being marked as spam, allowing for targeted fixes.

Next, let’s look at tools to help you check email deliverability.

Top 5 Email Deliverability Checkers in 2025

An email deliverability checker acts as a diagnostic tool, providing valuable data to help you identify and resolve potential deliverability problems.

Check email deliverability online with the help of these tools.

MxToolbox

MXToolbox is a mail deliverability tester offering a wide range of free and paid tools for diagnosing email deliverability issues. It includes blacklist monitoring, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC checks, and inbox placement testing.

GlockApps

The Inbox Insight tool from GlockApps provides in-depth inbox placement testing, showing where your emails land across various ISPs. This deliverability tester also analyzes content and authentication, giving actionable insights to improve deliverability.

Validity Everest

Everest offers a comprehensive suite of tools to test email for deliverability, including reputation monitoring, list hygiene, and detailed analytics. It’s a robust solution for businesses focused on maximizing email performance.

Folderly

F o lderly utilizes AI to test email address deliverability; it also helps users run a domain email deliverability test. It focuses on domain reputation management, identifying spam triggers, and providing insights into inbox placement.

MailReach

MailReach is an email deliverability tester specializing in email warm-up and deliverability improvement. It helps build and maintain a positive sender reputation through automated email interactions and deliverability monitoring.

How to Test Email Reputation

Maintaining a healthy email reputation is vital for ensuring your messages reach their intended recipients. The following table outlines key methods and tools used to run an email reputation test.

An email reputation tester can provide insight into how email providers perceive your sending practices.

Test Area	Tools or methods	How they work
Blacklist checks	Tools such as MXToolbox and Spamhaus can help.	These checks identify if your IP address or domain name is listed on known spam blacklists.
Sender reputation services	Sender Score and Talos Intelligence offer sender scores.	These services provide an overall assessment of your sender credibility and reputation.
Postmaster tools	Platforms such as Google Postmaster Tools and Microsoft SNDS provide accurate data.	These tools provide direct feedback from major email providers regarding your perceived trust level.
Authentication checkers	The process involves checking SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for proper configuration.	This verification ensures proper authentication, proving you are a legitimate sender.

Email reputation checks

The Difference Between Email Deliverability and Email Delivery

Email deliverability and email delivery are related concepts, but it’s critical to understand the difference between the two, as they refer to different stages in the email-sending process.

This is how they differ:

Email Delivery	Email Deliverability
It aims to understand if the email reaches the recipient’s mailbox.	Email deliverability tells us whether the email reached the recipient’s inbox.
It involves the physical transfer of the email message through the Internet and email servers.	It includes the initial email delivery and the factors influencing whether the email is placed in the recipient’s inbox or the spam folder.
A successful email delivery means that the email has reached the recipient’s email server, but it doesn’t guarantee that it will land in the recipient’s inbox.	Email deliverability considers sender reputation, authentication, content quality, and recipient engagement, as well as where the email landed.

Email delivery vs. Email deliverability

As you can see, achieving good email delivery rates is the first challenge for email marketers, while consistently landing in the inbox — email deliverability — is the ultimate goal.

How Does Email Delivery Testing Work?

Testing email deliverability involves transmitting controlled probe messages across server infrastructures while tracking their journey. Diagnostic tools monitor SMTP transactions in real-time, capturing acceptance rates and technical failures such as bounces or timeouts. An inbox delivery tool checker is an example of such a tool, helping you check deliverability of email address.

The process verifies successful transmission by examining:

Delivery logs,
Connection statuses,
Receipt confirmations.

An email delivery tester or email delivery checker can simulate various sending scenarios to identify potential bottlenecks or configuration issues before they impact actual campaigns.

How to Test Email Delivery

To test email address delivery, you need to verify your emails are actually getting to the recipient’s mail server.

This involves several steps:

Send test emails: Start by sending a deliverability test email to a range of email addresses, including those on different domains.
Analyze server logs: Check your mail server’s logs for delivery confirmations or error messages. These logs provide detailed information about the email’s journey.
Monitor bounce messages: Pay close attention to bounce messages, which indicate delivery failures. These messages often contain specific error codes explaining why the email was rejected.
Use delivery reports: If your ESP offers delivery reports, review them for insights into delivery status. Maintain a schedule to check email delivery reports.
Confirm with recipients: In some cases, you may need to directly confirm with recipients that they received the email. This is particularly useful for critical communications.

By combining these methods, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your email delivery rates.

What Makes Emails Go to Spam?

Different bits and pieces come together to determine whether your emails will successfully reach your recipients’ inboxes or be flagged as spam (or even blocked!)

Here are 7 common reasons why your email deliverability rates are taking a hit:

Sender reputation: Your sender reputation is probably the most crucial factor in email deliverability. It’s a measure of your sending history, including factors like email engagement, spam complaints, email bounce rates, and previous deliverability performance.
Email security protocols: If you have not added email authentication protocols like SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) to your domain, your deliverability will be quite poor.
Email content: Your content, including email subject lines, body text, and attachments, can impact deliverability. Spammy content or using spam trigger words can bring down your deliverability rates.
Email list hygiene: The quality of your email list matters. Non-maintenance leads to outdated or invalid email addresses, which then spikes email bounces and spam complaints.
Email engagement: If your recipients don’t engage with your emails, and the ESP notices poor opens, clicks, and replies, it can negatively impact your deliverability.
Spam reports: Recipient complaints about your emails being spammy can hurt your sender reputation, which in turn, affects deliverability.
Regulatory compliance: If you don’t comply with email unsubscribe laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act, it will result in low email deliverability.

Understanding and addressing these pain points is crucial for optimizing email deliverability and ensuring your messages consistently land in the inbox rather than being flagged as spam.

7 Tips to Help Your Emails Reach the Inbox

Poor inboxing is a serious problem for email marketers; you must act on email deliverability issues ASAP.

If you want to improve email deliverability, implement the 7 points below.

Authenticate your email domain: At Campaign Refinery, we stipulate our clients implement email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for good reason. Adding these to your domain helps verify the legitimacy of your emails and enhances trust with ESPs.
Consider a dedicated IP address: You could use a dedicated email IP address to send emails instead of shared IPs. This can help to improve your email deliverability because it gives you more control over your IP reputation. If you must use a shared IP, ensure the other email senders are as diligent and implement the same best email practices you do!
Keep your email list clean: This means removing inactive and unengaged subscribers from your list. A clean email list will help to improve your open rates and click-through rates, which are two important factors ESPs use to determine deliverability. At Campaign Refinery, our clients don’t worry about manually cleaning lists — we offer our clients automated list cleaning, which removes all invalid emails, spam traps, and dormant email addresses.
Write your content carefully: Avoid using all caps, excessive punctuation, and spam trigger words in your subject lines and copy. Instead, focus on writing clear and concise content accurately reflecting the intent of your email.
Segment your email list: Having a solid email segmentation strategy helps you reap the benefits of targeted email marketing.
Send emails at the right time: Figure out the best time to send emails; experiment with different send times to see what works best for your audience.
Test and preview: Regularly A/B testing emails across different email clients, devices, and browsers help ensure compatibility and readability.

Following these tips can help you to improve your email deliverability and ensure your emails avoid the spam folder!

Campaign Refinery is the Best Email Deliverability Service

One of the most critical factors in ensuring excellent email deliverability is your email service provider. And you deserve a platform that delivers top-notch results because what is the point of burning money on campaigns if your emails aren’t making it to your customers’ inboxes?

Campaign Refinery is the ultimate email deliverability solution, offering you the best email deliverability in the industry. If you ran an email marketing deliverability comparison, we would outshine our competitors with ease.

As a top-tier email deliverability services platform, we help all types of businesses reach their target audience and achieve their marketing goals. Our platform is powered by state-of-the-art software to help you analyze and understand your email data and identify potential issues.

And there’s more!

Why Campaign Refinery is the Best Deliverability Email Marketing Service

At Campaign Refinery, we offer customers more than just the best email marketing deliverability — we also have a range of features and tools to unlock superior inboxing.

Here are the top 5 features Campaign Refinery offers:

A user-friendly editor makes it easy to create beautiful and engaging emails,
An automated email list management system to help you to keep your lists clean and up-to-date,
Our advanced email marketing automation builder allows you to send mass personalized emails,
A rewards program to help you boost engagement rates significantly,
Powerful analytics and reporting tools to help you track email performance.

And you don’t have to take our word for it! Here are a couple of customer testimonials:

“If you’re fed up with poor deliverability, definitely check out Campaign Refinery. It might just change your open rates forever.”

— Troy Ericson, Copywriting.org

“Switching to Campaign Refinery immediately increased my stats 4x, and revenue followed suit. I really wish I had made the move sooner.”

— Dave Miz, The Email Experience

The Ultimate Guide to Email Deliverability — The Inbox Formula!

The secret to our excellent deliverability rates lies in our decades of experience.

Campaign Refinery has been in the email game long enough to know exactly what works and what doesn’t. And we would love to share all we know about inboxing in the form of a compact guidebook.

It’s called The Inbox Formula, and it includes everything an aspiring email expert would want to learn. It contains in-depth knowledge, industry insights, best practices, and tips to make your sender reputation skyrocket.

This FREE guidebook is packed with actionable tips and advice you can use immediately. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced email marketer, The Inbox Formula will help you take your email marketing to the next level.

Grab it here: The Inbox Formula.

And if you’d like to understand better how Campaign Refinery can help your business specifically, check out our packages and apply to become our client!

FAQ

What is the MxToolbox Deliverability Test?

It’s a tool that analyzes your email server’s configuration and reputation to identify potential delivery issues.

How to Check Deliverability of Email?

Use a mail deliverability test tool like MxToolbox or Mailercheck to assess your sender reputation and email configuration.

What is a Gmail Deliverability Test?

It’s a process of evaluating if your emails are reaching Gmail inboxes, not spam folders. Google Postmaster Tools can provide accurate information.

Which Are the Best Email Deliverability Tools?

Mxtoolbox, GlockApps, and Mail-Tester are among the top options.

How to Check Email Deliverability?

Utilize an email deliverability tool or manual tests to understand your sender reputation with mailbox providers, examine your authentication records, and track metrics accurately.

What is an Email Delivery Test?

A mail delivery test determines if emails are successfully delivered to recipient mail servers, regardless of inbox or spam folder placement. An email delivery check is different from a deliverability check.

Are There Free Email Deliverability Test Tools?

Yes, tools like MXToolbox, Lemwarm, and GMass offer free email deliverability checks.