Imagine getting your email ready to send after all that hard work crafting the content, designing the template, and segmenting your audience. You hit send with excitement...and then you wait. Days later, you check your email metrics, only to find that nobody opened your email because it went straight to the spam folder. No one likes to see low email deliverability rates, especially when they have put so much effort into their email marketing campaign. This blog will explore how your email deliverability rate affects your email marketing performance. We will also cover actionable tips to help you achieve consistently high inbox delivery rates to maximize engagement, drive conversions, and ensure every email lands precisely where it belongs—in the inbox.

Inframail's email infrastructure solution can help you achieve your email deliverability rate goals. Inframail gives you a reliable, proven path to higher email deliverability rates for better email performance.

Table of Contents

• What Is Email Deliverability and Why It Matters

• 10 Key Factors That Affect the Email Deliverability Rate

• 14 Best Email Deliverability Tools to Boost Your Inbox Placement Rates

• Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

What Is Email Deliverability and Why It Matters

Email deliverability defines how successfully emails reach recipients' inboxes instead of spam or promotional folders. It is a critical concept for businesses, emphasizing its impact on: 

• Engagement

• Conversions

• Brand reputation

Real-world examples and statistics highlight its importance, like the consequences of poor deliverability, such as reduced open rates or lost revenue.

All your warmup practice goes in vain in baseball if you don't hit the ball. You only stand a chance to play and win if your bat hits the ball. The same thing happens with emails. Email campaigns are like that ball; if they're not landing in the inbox, all the investment in money, time, and effort will be fruitless. So, landing in the recipient's inbox is the primary goal of assessing the performance of your email campaigns. It is known as email deliverability, which we will discuss in this guide.

Email Delivery Rate Vs. Email Deliverability

The biggest mix-up we see when we talk to customers is that deliverability is discussed in terms of delivery rate. But that’s not how it works. Delivery rate is a valuable metric, but deliverability is not the same. Let’s set the record straight: 

What Is Email Delivery Rate?

Delivery rate tells you whether or not your emails were received by the servers of your subscribers’ inbox providers. An email counts as delivered if it did not bounce. So your delivery rate is the percentage of emails delivered divided by the number of emails sent. 

Your delivery rate is the first step in the journey an email message takes after you hit “send.” It’s the equivalent of a mail carrier knocking on your house with a package. You can either accept the package and bring it inside your house or leave it out on your front stoop. 

What Is Email Deliverability? 

Deliverability is where your message lands if your subscriber does receive your email, such as the spam folder or the Gmail Promotions tab. It’s based on your domain’s: 

• Setup

• Authentication

• Email reputation

So the burden is on your shoulders if something goes wrong. Your deliverability is what happens after a message gets delivered. In the same way, you decide if you put that new package on your kitchen table or leave it by the door. Your ISP has additional processes to determine whether your message goes into the spam folder, one of your other folders, or the recipient’s inbox.

How Does Bounce Rate Relate to Delivery Rate? 

Email providers actively monitor your bounce rates. You may get blocked if you consistently have high bounce rates from sending too many emails to fake or incorrect email addresses. There are two kinds of bounces:

• A soft bounce is a temporary bounce due to: 

• Email volume

• A temporarily suspended account

• A receiving server outage

Though the delivery of your current message was unsuccessful, you may be able to deliver another email to that address later.

• A hard bounce is a permanent bounce due to an invalid or incorrect email address or being blocked. You won’t ever be able to email this address from your current domain.

We recommend removing any emails from your email list that bounce quickly. You can try soft bounces 1-2 more times before removing them from your list, but keep an eye on any email address that bounces, or you risk hurting your delivery rate and, thus, your deliverability.

The Relationship Between Delivery Rate And Deliverability

So what does this all mean? Even if your delivery rate looks healthy—you see few bounces, and most of your emails are being delivered—it’s still possible that your emails never make it to the inbox. Many marketers conflate delivery rate and deliverability because mailbox providers often tell you if they deliver a message (with metrics like bounce rate or delivery rate) but rarely give you any insights into deliverability (where your emails land.) Even with a stellar delivery rate, you can still have deliverability issues.

Why Marketers Should Care About Email Delivery Rate And Deliverability

The average email takes about two weeks to produce. At any given time, 46% of email marketers have up to five emails in production. Your team is spending a ton of time and energy getting the segmentation, design, and copy of an email just right—so why ruin all that work with a poor delivery rate or deliverability? 

If your email gets rejected from a mailbox provider’s algorithm or gets hidden in the spam folder, then none of your subscribers will see the email campaign you worked so hard to produce. Not only that, but an issue with your delivery rate or your deliverability can continue a downward spiral that impacts engagement for the subscribers who do receive your email. 

All of this reduces the effectiveness of your email campaigns—aka reducing the revenue you receive. Email deliverability can make or break your email marketing strategy. It’s that important.

How To Calculate Email Delivery Rate And Your Deliverability

Most ESPs (or tools like Litmus Email Analytics, cough cough) can calculate KPIs like: 

• Open rate

• Click-through rate

• Conversion rate

Understanding the Difference Between Delivery Rate and Deliverability Rate

But what about your email delivery rate? That’s something you can calculate yourself. 

Delivery Rate = # of emails sent – # of bounces / # of emails sent x 100 

Calculating your deliverability rate is a little trickier in practice because mailbox providers don’t have to tell you whether or not I’ve landed in the spam folder. In theory, you can calculate your deliverability like this: 

Deliverability = # of emails delivered to the inbox / # of emails sent x 100. 

Your best bet is to use a deliverability platform or a pre-send spam testing tool. 

What Happens When You Hit Send?

Before we talk about the nitty-gritty of email deliverability, it's essential to understand what happens after you click send. When an email is sent from the sender's server, it must clear the email gateway and the spam filters. Think of them as the gatekeepers of the recipient's mail server. These filters assess the email for different factors like: 

• The legitimacy of the sender

• Authenticity of email content

• Domain reputation, etc. 

Emails that pass all the checkboxes are delivered to the recipient's server in the inbox or promotion tab (applicable for Gmail users only). Many get stuck in the process and are either rejected by the recipient's server or sent to the spam folder. So, if your emails are making it to the inbox, Voila! With that in mind, let's discuss the most asked question.

What is a Good Email Deliverability Rate?

Globally, the average inbox placement rates (IPRs) were just below 85 percent in 2022, meaning one of every six messages failed to reach the inbox. 

Validity's Email Deliverability Benchmark Report 2023 

Per our State of Email Report 2023, average inbox placement rates across industries typically range between 70% and 100%. While exact industry-specific deliverability rates can vary and may not always be publicly available, many industry reports and benchmarks provide insights into average deliverability rates for various sectors. 

Industry Benchmarks: What Is a Good Email Deliverability Rate for Your Sector?

Here’s a general overview of deliverability expectations in various industries: 

• Industry Range SaaS 90%-95% 

• Retail 85%-90% 

• Finance 80%-85% 

• Healthcare 85%-90% 

• Nonprofit 70%-85% 

• Technology 80%-90% 

Note: These ranges are indicative and can fluctuate based on specific practices and recent changes in email service provider algorithms and filtering technologies. So, a good email deliverability rate varies from industry to industry and is context-dependent. 

When to Investigate: Signs of Email Deliverability Problems

Maintaining email deliverability above 70% is a good practice, and striving to exceed the industry average can help ensure effective email communication. If it goes below 70%, it might be worth looking into email deliverability problems.

Related Reading

• Why Are My Emails Going To Spam
• Email Monitoring
• Email Deliverability Issues
• Email Quality Score
• Bounce Rate in Email Marketing
• How To Avoid Email Going To Spam
• Why Do Emails Bounce
• SPF or DKIM
• How To Check If Your Emails Are Going To Spam

10 Key Factors That Affect the Email Deliverability Rate

1. Sender Reputation: Your Email's Report Card

Email sender reputation is a score assigned to each sender by an Internet service provider that sends emails. The higher the score, the more ISPs will land emails in the recipient's inbox. Poor sender reputation, occurring when the score falls below an acceptable threshold, results in ISPs putting your inbox in the spam folder or rejecting it altogether. 

Key Factors ISPs Use to Determine Sender Reputation

Different ISPs have their criteria to assess the sender's reputation, but some of the standard criteria include: 

• The number of legitimate emails sent by the organization

• How many recipients mark the organization's emails as spam, complain to the ISP, or unsubscribe from the mailing list?

• How often do the emails hit the ISP's spam trap?

• The blacklisting status of the organization's domain.

• How many email bounces are taking place?

• How does the recipient engage with the emails? 

Top Tools to Monitor and Improve Your Sender Reputation

Numerous tools are available on the market that help you get an idea of your sender's reputation. Some of them are as follows. 

• SenderScore.org

• BarracudaCentral

• TrustedSource.org

2. IP Reputation: The Email Sender's Address

The numerical identifier of the server (sender) is known as the Internet Protocol (IP) address. Mailmodo.com, gmail.com, and companyname.com are used to send emails and assess the domain's reputation. A lower IP or domain reputation signals IP to land your email in a spam folder. 

The type of IP address you use, whether shared or dedicated, will impact your deliverability. For instance, if you use a dedicated IP address, other senders' sending activity and campaign performance will impact your deliverability. Gmail spam filters also look at the envelope domain's reputation to decide if an email should land in the inbox or spam. 

3. Email Authentication Practices: Verify Your Email Identity

One key component of setting up the right email infrastructure is following the email authentication protocols. Email authentication conveys to your receiving server that the email is from a verified and legitimate domain, not a fraudster. 

Hence, email authentication is an important factor to consider so your email doesn't end up landing in a spam folder and directly reaches your subscribers' inbox. These are the key components that affect email deliverability in email authentication: 

• SPF

• DKIM

• DMARC

4. Email Sending Frequency and Volume: Find Your Ideal Pace

While setting up the email infrastructure, the IP is advised to warm up. It's because mailbox filters keep an eye over sending volume and frequency. If they see a sudden surge in emails sent from a domain, it will land your email in spam.

Frequency must be consistent and consider the user's opted-in. If they opted in only for a weekly newsletter, sending promotional emails will increase your chances of landing in spam.

5. Number of Spam Complaints: Keep Recipients Happy 

Spam complaints refer to the number of times a recipient marked an email as spam. Spam complaints can increase for many reasons, including:

• Sending too frequent emails

• Irrelevant emails

• Sending emails after unsubscription

If emails receive more spam complaints, ISPs will consider this a negative sign and mark your future emails as spam.

6. Poor Email List Building Practices: Clean That List 

Poor email acquisition strategies like:

• Purchasing email list

• Sending emails to disengaged or inactive users

• Sending emails to users who have unsubscribed

• Sending emails to non-existent or incorrect email addresses

All these signal ISPs that you need to follow the best practices in the email list for cleaning your email list. Poor list hygiene affects your sender's reputation by increasing your chance of hitting spam traps, email addresses that capture spammers. If you keep hitting spam traps, your reputation will go downhill, and so will the deliverability. 

7. The Behavior of Recipients: Keep It Engaging 

If your emails are getting delivered to the inbox, you will still enjoy the same rate for a while. Mailbox algorithms check the recipient's actions and behavior, asking the following questions:

• Did they open the email?

• Which links do they click on?

• How long do they engage with the email?

• Do they delete the email without opening it?

• Are they unsubscribing from your emails?

A continuous negative email engagement will accumulate over time, signaling the ISPs that your emails might not be relevant to the recipient. So, in the future, your emails will land in the junk folder.

8. The Subject Line and Content of the Email: Make It Friendly

Among the significant factors, the email content seems insignificant, but it still affects email deliverability. Everything impacts deliverability, from your subject line and preheader text to the email footer. ISPs use spam filters to detect irrelevant or spammy content, which can land emails in the spam folder. 

Some of the everyday things that impact deliverability include:

• Spam trigger words

• Link shorteners such as bit.ly

• Using HTTP:// links instead of HTTPS://

• Image-only emails without any text content

• Use of all-caps lock text

• Too many memorable characters in the subject line, like Buy now!! Limited deal !!

9. Low Engagement: Re-Engage or Remove 

If a subscriber receives 50 emails but does not open any, this is just another signal to the inbox provider that the sender needs to follow best practices. Therefore, more and more of their emails will be placed into the spam folder. Again, check for how the email addresses were collected. Proactively saying “goodbye” to inactive contacts is always better than waiting for them to unsubscribe. 

We’ve seen multiple times when a smaller active email list of 10,000 contacts drives much more sales than 50,000 (because 40,000 contacts were inactive and those bad contacts were damaging the sender’s reputation). Plus, sending emails to inactive contacts isn’t cost-effective. 

10. A Sudden Increase in the Number of Emails Sent: Avoid Spikes

If a sender usually sends to 50,000 subscribers and then starts sending to 150,000, this spike will cause more emails to be sent to the spam folder (because inbox providers consider spikes an unexpected behavior and spam attack). If you want to increase your mailing list size, do that gradually.

Related Reading

• DMARC vs DKIM
• Importance Of DMARC
• What Is a Soft Bounce Email
• Email Deliverability Checklist
• What Affects Email Deliverability
• Why Is Email Deliverability Important
• Email Bounce Rate
• Fix Email Reputation
• Improve Sender Reputation
• Email Hard Bounce
• Email Deliverability Tools
• Email Deliverability Best Practices
• Best Email Domains

14 Best Email Deliverability Tools to Boost Your Inbox Placement Rates

Email deliverability tools help you test your emails before sending them to a real audience. Instead of waiting until after you’ve sent your emails to evaluate their performance, you can discover any potential issues that could hurt your deliverability rate — and fix them — before you even hit send. 

Email deliverability features to watch out for. For each tool, describe its key features, unique benefits, and the type of users or scenarios it’s best suited for. Return a thorough response with all of the information below:

Inbox Placement

This feature checks if your emails are landing in the: 

• Main inbox

• Spam folder

• Secondary folders 

It helps you understand where your emails are being delivered. Remember that emails sent via these tools are essentially cold emails, as they never generate any interactions. Your real deliverability rate will likely be higher than what these email deliverability testing tools indicate.

Spam Checkers

A spam checker analyzes your email content and structure to identify elements that might trigger spam filters, such as spammy words or poorly formatted HTML, helping you improve your emails so they don’t end up in the spam folder.

Authentication Checkers

Some email deliverability tools offer this feature to check that your emails have proper authentication (like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC). This verifies that your email is legitimate and not forged, increasing the likelihood that it will be delivered successfully.

Reputation Monitoring Tools

Reputation monitoring tools check for blacklists or negative scores that might harm your email deliverability and suggest ways to improve your sender reputation. 

Email Validation

Email validation tools verify the accuracy and validity of email addresses on your list, reducing the chances of sending emails to invalid or non-existent addresses, which can hurt your sender reputation.

Engagement Simulation Tools

Engagement simulation interacts with your emails in ways that real users would, like opening and marking them as important to help build a positive sender reputation and improve future deliverability. Some email deliverability software tools offer this as part of their service. 

A Detailed Look at the Best Email Deliverability Tools

1. Inframail: The Email Deliverability Solution for Cold Outreach

At Inframail, we are revolutionizing cold email infrastructure with unlimited inboxes at a flat rate. 

We provide: 

• Microsoft-backed deliverability

• Dedicated IP addresses

• Automated technical setup 

It scales its cold email outreach efforts efficiently:

• Agencies

• Recruiters

• SDRs  

Main benefits of using our service: 

• Automated SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup

• Dedicated email servers for each user

• 16-hour priority support daily

Unlike traditional providers that charge per inbox and leave you wrestling with technical configurations, Inframail streamlines the entire process. We handle the complex infrastructure setup while you focus on reaching more prospects.

InfraMail provides the robust email infrastructure you need without the usual technical headaches and per-inbox costs, whether: 

• You're an agency looking to scale outreach

• A recruiter connecting with candidates

• An SDR driving sales

Start buying domains now and set up your email infrastructure today with our email infrastructure tool.

2. Glock Apps

At EmailTooltester, we use Glock Apps for our email deliverability testing. It’s an affordable and easy-to-use toolset that helps improve email deliverability by monitoring and optimizing email campaigns. Glock Apps’ main offering is inbox placement monitoring, which tests if your emails are landing in the inbox, spam, or getting lost across different email providers through seedlists. The spam testing feature evaluates your emails that might trigger spam filters for: 

• Spam score

• Content issues

• Header problems 

Glock Apps provides DMARC, DKIM, and SPF monitoring to ensure your emails pass essential authentication checks, offering guidance on setting these up correctly. It also includes IP reputation monitoring, tracking your sending IP addresses for blacklist appearances and monitoring reputation scores to help you maintain a positive sender image. While we love some things about this email deliverability software, there are definitely a few areas for improvement.

Glock Apps: Pros, Cons, and Best Practices for Email Deliverability Testing

Pros

• The inbox placement seed list includes a wide range of ISPs, including major global providers (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc.) and country-specific providers (e.g. GMX, Web.de)

• For some mailbox providers (e.g. Gmail), it lets you see the proportion of emails that landed in the Primary inbox vs secondary tabs like Promotions

• Checks against 50+ popular blacklists

• Detailed and easy-to-understand reports

• Decent range of free tools, including 2 free monthly spam tests, domain checker, and Gappie bot (integrates with Telegram or Slack to deliver real-time reports about any domain or security issues)

• Can set up automated tests if you use an SMTP server, simplifying the testing process

Cons

• In the past, we’ve encountered minor errors with calculations and data accuracy, although Glock Apps claim these have been fixed with the latest version

• As you’re working with a relatively small seed list (with around 100 mailboxes), you need to be mindful not to draw too many conclusions from the results. Use them instead for identifying potential issues and as a starting point for further testing

• We’ve also encountered issues where some ESPs haven’t allowed us to upload the seed list to their platform, although this can sometimes be resolved by speaking to their customer support

Glock Apps Pricing Plans: Which One Suits Your Needs?

Pricing

• Free plan 

  • Includes 2 spam test credits 

  • Up to 10,000 DMARC checks per month

• Essential plan

  • $59/month 

  • Includes 360 spam test credits 

  • 600,000 DMARC checks per month

• Growth plan

  • $99/month

  • Includes 1,080 spam test credits

  • 1.2 million DMARC checks per month

• Enterprise plan

  • $99/month

  • Includes 1,800 spam test credits 

  • 12 million DMARC checks per month

3. Mailgun Optimize

Mailgun by Sinch is another comprehensive platform that offers SMTP-based email sending services (Mailgun Send), in addition to deliverability tools (Mailgun Optimize). You don’t need to use them as your email service provider. Mailgun’s email deliverability testing tools can be used with any ESP. Similar to Glock Apps, Mailgun’s Inbox Placement tests let you send an email to a seed list, and assess your deliverability to various mailbox providers. 

It also offers additional deliverability tools, such as email validation and spam trap monitoring to improve: 

• List hygiene

• Domain and IP monitoring

• Email preview

Mailgun Optimize also benefits from Mailgun’s expertise as an email service provider, which helps it to provide knowledgeable support and a reliable service.

Mailgun: A Comprehensive Review of Pros and Cons for Email Deliverability

Pros

• Seed list covers a wide range of mailbox providers

• Ideal if you’re already using Mailgun for sending emails, or are looking for a transactional email provider

• Google Postmaster Tools integration is easy to set up

• Can easily switch between regions (North America or Europe) to specify where you want your message data to be processed

• Flexible APIs and webhooks such as email validation service and message events

Cons

• Inbox placement tests don’t differentiate between emails that land in the Primary folder vs Promotions folder – you just get an overall Inbox rate

• Only checks against 8 blocklists

• Due to its technical nature, it’s generally more suited to developers than marketers

• Doesn’t provide email spam checks within the control panel like most other deliverability tools though

• After we canceled our subscription, Mailgun continued to charge our credit card, which was a major annoyance. Additionally, they immediately close your account, even when your current term has yet to end.

Mailgun Pricing Plans: Choosing the Right Plan for Your Needs

Pricing

• Pilot plan

  • $49/month 

  • Includes 2,500 email address validations

  • 25 inbox placement tests

  • 500 email previews

• Starter plan

  • $99/month 

  • Includes 5,000 email address validations

  • 50 inbox placement tests

  • 1,000 email previews

  • Spam trap monitoring

  • Blocklist monitoring

  • Google Postmaster Tools integration 

4. Validity Everest

Mailgun Pricing Plans: Choosing the Right Plan for Your Needs

5. Warmy

While the email deliverability tools we’ve looked at so far are primarily designed to give you insights into your deliverability, Warmy goes a step further by helping you proactively improve your deliverability. Warmy is a specialized email deliverability software that helps you warm up your email accounts and IP addresses. 

This involves gradually increasing the volume of emails sent from a new or inactive email address or IP to build a positive sending reputation with ISPs, and improve inbox placement rates. Using its test mailboxes, Warmy can also automate the opening of and replying to emails and marking emails as important. This simulates real engagement, which can help build a positive sender reputation more quickly than manual methods. 

Exploring Warmy's Deliverability Features and Limitations

Of course, you also get access to other deliverability features, such as: 

• Inbox placement tests

• DNS records tests

• APIs

• Weekly autotests

Note that inbox placement tests aren’t its main focus. In fact, on Warmy’s lower-level plans, you can only run a very small number of tests each month. 

Warmy: Key Features, Limitations, and Considerations for Email Warm-up

Pros

• Offers a range of free tools, including: 

  • Email deliverability tests

  • Email spam checkers 

  • DMARC generators 

• Able to select warm-up “temperature” to define the intensity of warming-up activities 

• 23 different “warm up” languages are available, as well as numerous warm-up “topics”, so you can tailor them to your target market 

• 24/7 chat support on all plans, as well as access to a deliverability consultant 

• API is available, as well as an integration with Google Postmaster Tools 

Cons

• Works with a small seed list of around 40 mailboxes. Also includes a limited number of ISPs

• Gmail

• G Suite

• Outlook

• MS 365

• Yahoo

• iCloud

• Zoho

• Zoho PRO, SMTP)

• Relying heavily on simulated engagement might offer short-term improvements in deliverability but may fail to build sustainable, long-term sender reputation. For example, if ISPs identify the warm-up activities as non-genuine, it could lead to penalties, such as reduced deliverability or blacklisting 

• Not yet able to select ISPs to target in warm up process, although this feature will be introduced soon 

• Limited integrations. Only integrations with Hubspot and Monday are available. If you use another email service provider or CRM, you must connect via SMTP. Tools like ActiveCampaign are not directly supported. You’ll need to warm up using Warmy’s seedlist, available only on request. 

Warmy Pricing Plans: Which Tier Fits Your Email Warm-up Needs?

Pricing

• Starter 

  • $49/mailbox/month) 

  • Includes 100 daily warm up emails

  • 1 DNS records test

  • 1 inbox placement test

  • API access and premium support 

• Business

  • $129/mailbox/month)

  • Increases limits to 300 daily warm up emails

  • 3 DNS records tests

  • 3 inbox placement tests

  • Ability to choose warm up language

• Premium

  • $189/month 

  • Increases limits to 1,000 daily warm up emails

  • 10 DNS records tests

  • 10 inbox placement tests

  • Adds Google Postmaster Tools integration

  • Ability to use own templates in warm up

  • Ability to choose warm up topics

  • Expert and Premium plans also available 

6. ZeroBounce

If you’re after a complete solution that will take care of every crucial aspect of your deliverability, ZeroBounce is a tool you can’t go past. Its feature set boasts a long list of email deliverability tools including: 

• Email list validation

• Inbox placement tests

• Email server test

• Blacklist monitoring

• DMARC monitoring

In fact, it’s the only platform on our list that ticks all the boxes in our table above. But a few little extras make ZeroBounce stand out even more: You can append activity data to contacts to see their engagement within a specified period. 

Leveraging AI for Email Scoring, Lead Generation, and Warm-up Tools

AI-powered email scoring helps to identify the likelihood of reaching a contact. There’s even an email finder to help with your lead generation efforts and a warmup tool to simulate email engagement (similar to Warmy). It's not bad for a platform that throws in many of these tools for free and whose paid plans start at an affordable $18/month!

Comprehensive Email Deliverability Tools: Pros, Cons, and Key Considerations

Pros

• Most comprehensive set of email deliverability tools we’ve seen in a single platform

• Direct integrations with a wide range of ESPs and apps (plus Zapier) 

• 24/7 live chat support and detailed Help Center 

• Decent range of free tools is available, including a free email verification tool 

Cons

• The various pricing options (including multiple plans and pay as you go vs subscription options) can be confusing. 

• The cost per email verification can add up quickly.

• The verification process can sometimes be slow (taking several hours in some cases), particularly with very large lists, which may be a drawback for users needing quick turnaround times.

• As a security measure, the tool automatically logs users out after a few minutes of inactivity, which can be frustrating.

Pricing

Email verification plans start at $18/month for 2,000 credits (pay as you go option also available) 

• Free Deliverability Toolkit Plan 

  • Includes 1 inbox test

  • 1 email server test

  • 1 blacklist monitor

  • 10 email finder/domain searches 

• Starter Deliverability Toolkit Plan

  • $49/month)

  • Includes 50 inbox tests

  • 50 email server tests

  • 10 blacklist monitors

  • 1k email finder/ domain searches

  • 2 DMARC monitor domains

• Team Deliverability Toolkit Plan 

  • $99/month

  • Includes 100 inbox tests

  • 100 email server tests

  • 20 blacklist monitors

  • 10k email finder/domain searches

  • 5 DMARC monitor domains

  • 10 warm up accounts

  • 50 warm up actions/day 

  • Pro and Enterprise plans also available 

7. InboxAlly

Few email deliverability tools offer a package as complete as InboxAlly’s. As you might have noticed in our table above, InboxAlly ticks almost all the boxes, offering features such as: 

• Inbox placement testing

• Email verification

• DMARC analytics

• Spam audits

Like Warmy and ZeroBounce, InboxAlly works on improving your deliverability by simulating real user interactions, such as: 

• Opening emails

• Marking them as important

• Moving them from spam to the primary inbox

InboxAlly: How Email Warm-up and Training Improve Deliverability and Open Rates

This “trains” email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook, to recognize your emails as desired content. InboxAlly claims that, as a result, most users experience an improvement in their deliverability rates within 1-2 weeks, with some even seeing their open rates double in this period. There’s even a warmup planning tool to help you identify how many emails you should be sending to the seedlist daily, depending on your deliverability goals.

Evaluating the Pros and Cons of Email Deliverability Service: Features, Limitations, and Pricing

Pros

• Can test the service for free 

• Eas

• y to navigate (although the interface design is a little outdated) 

• Offers guided set up to help you get started easily 

Cons

• Seedlist only includes Gmail, Yahoo, Gsuite, Hotmail and Yahoo accounts 

• Direct integrations with just a handful of ESPs (Mailchimp, GetResponse and AWeber) 

• Prices are at the higher end, starting from $149/month 

Choosing the Right Pricing Plan for Your Email Deliverability Needs

• Pricing Starter

  • $149/month

  • Allows for 1 sender profile

  • Up to 100 seed mails per day

  • Ideal for those sending less than 2k emails per day

  • Email support included

• Plus

  • $645/month

  • 5 sender profiles

  • 500 seed emails per day

  • Ideal for those sending less than 10k emails per day

  • Includes email and live chat support

• Premium

  • $1,190/month

  • 10 sender profiles

  • 1,000 seed emails per day

  • Ideal for those sending less than 20k emails per day

  • Includes email, live chat and phone support 

  • Enterprise plan also available. 

8. Folderly

Folderly is primarily marketed to those who send outreach campaigns to new contacts. Its biggest draw is its ability to put your email deliverability program on autopilot. By keeping close tabs on your sending mailboxes and helping automate the process of “warming up” mailboxes, Folderly helps you boost your chances of landing in inboxes. 

Folderly: Enhancing Email Deliverability with Daily Sending and Inbox Insights

Folderly’s daily sending program provides a real-time, in-depth analysis of all aspects of email deliverability, from whether your technical setup is correct to elements of your campaigns that could be triggering spam filters. It also helps to build your sender reputation by engaging with your campaigns, replying to emails, and moving them from the spam folder to the inbox. 

This is intended to help improve deliverability rates in the real world. For more detailed email placement reports, as well as insights into IP reputation and blacklists, you’ll need to add-on the Inbox Insights product, which comes at an additional cost.

Folderly: Balancing Automation, Integration, and Cost in Email Deliverability

Pros

• Send test emails directly from within Folderly after connecting your mailbox (no need to upload seedlists to their ESP)

• “Daily upkeep emails” automate the process of sending emails to Folderly’s test mailboxes to help build your sender reputation

• Can connect via SMTP or through direct integrations with a wide range of ESPs

Cons

• Can get pricey due to Inbox Insights being an add-on product that’s separate to the main Folderly product

• Only supports testing to major ISPs (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook)

• Because you’re permitting Folderly to manage your mailboxes on autopilot, there is always a risk of damage to sender reputation if something goes wrong

• Help Center is not very detailed with just a handful of articles

Folderly Pricing Breakdown: Costs and Value for Email Deliverability Tools

Pricing

• The Main Folderly product starts at $96/mailbox/month. The price per mailbox goes down once you use it for more than 9 mailboxes. 

• Inbox Insights add-on is free for 2 tests per month. You can upgrade to access unlimited tests from $64/month. 

9. MxToolbox

MxToolbox stands out from other email deliverability tools, thanks to its wide range of diagnostics for: 

• Email

• DNS

• Network performance

It provides detailed: 

• blacklist monitoring

• Sends real-time alerts

• Fits well into IT workflows

Who Benefits Most from This Platform’s Holistic Email Management Approach?

The platform's holistic approach to managing and optimizing online presence is particularly helpful for IT professionals and businesses looking to maintain a smooth-running email infrastructure. Less technical users might need help with its extensive range of features and diagnostic tools.

Comprehensive Email Management Tools: Balancing Features, Usability, and Cost

Pros

• Extensive feature list, including: 

  • Inbox placement analysis

  • Recipient complaints reports

  • Email configuration analysis

  • Blacklist monitoring

  • Mail flow monitoring

  • Domain impersonation protection 

• Offers a wide range of tools for email, DNS, and network performance, providing thorough diagnostics and insights
  
  

Cons

• Website is difficult to navigate and the backend of the tool is also complex (with an outdated design) 

• Steep learning curve 

• Knowledge base is not very detailed 

• Expensive compared to other tools 

• No free trial – need to pay to start using the service (although you can request a refund at the end of the month) 

• Known issues with sending inbox placement tests when using Hubspot – it often requires double opt-ins to be enabled 

Pricing Plans for Email Monitoring and Delivery Optimization: Which One Fits Your Needs?

Pricing

• Free plan 

  • Limited to just blacklist monitoring 

  • Delivery Center

• $129/month

  • Includes features listed in the previous plan. 

  • Allows for monitoring for up to 5 domains. 

  • For up to 500k email messages. 

• Delivery Center Plus

  • $399/month

  • Includes everything listed in the previous plan. 

  • Adds advanced email delivery threat tools and SPF Flattening. 

  • For up to 5 million email messages. 

10. TrulyInbox

Email warm-ups are the first important step in achieving great email deliverability. TrulyInbox is an excellent tool for this.

Top Features

1. Unlimited Email Warm-Ups: Yes, adding email accounts is unlimited; it lets you connect unlimited email accounts.

2. A Healthy Pool of Mailboxes: Email warm-ups require many great and healthy email accounts to achieve proper warm-ups. TrulyInbox has a vast and healthy pool of thousands of email accounts for these processes.

3. Multiple Opens For a Single Email: While automatically warming up emails, giving the ESPs a feel that a robot is doing this can become tricky. TrulyInbox opens an email multiple times, mimicking human behavior to recheck any information for confirmation. This greatly improves the quality of warmed-up domains in ESPs’ eyes, boosting your domain’s sender reputation.

TrulyInbox: Customizable Warm-Up Processes and Flexible Pricing Plans

Amazing Add-On:
Unlike other email warm-up tools, TrulyInbox allows you to customize your warm-up process fully! You can customize the frequency of sending as per your requirements. (Although we recommend gradual increments to safeguard your deliverability)

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Starting: $22/Month

• Growth: $59/Month

• Scale: $142/Month

• Business: $217/Month

11. MailGenius

MailGenius is also a comprehensive email deliverability service that can help you improve your email deliverability score. What sets MailGenius apart from other tools is its advanced algorithms. These algorithms can instantly identify potential issues in your emails that might trigger spam filters or cause them to be flagged as junk. 

That means leveraging MailGenius’s insights can optimize your email content and increase your email deliverability rate.

MailGenius: Advanced Features for Email Optimization and Affordable Pricing

Top Features

1. Handles Bounced Emails: The tool automatically handles bounced emails by removing invalid addresses from your lists to maintain a good sender reputation.

2. HTML Tester: It also analyzes your email’s HTML content and checks if it matches standards and best practices from Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail. It also checks how the content will appear on different devices.

3. Monitors Blacklists: It continuously monitors major spam blacklists/blocklists and alerts you if your IP or domain gets listed, which could impact delivery rates. Along with other features, MailGenius gives you step-by-step instructions on how to set up proper email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC so that you can prove to major ESPs that you’re a legitimate sender.

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Newbie: $8

• Standard: $20

• Genius: $39

• Automatic Email Testing: $79 

12. Spamhaus 

Spamhaus is a massive spam-tracking system that allows you to monitor and pinpoint spam sources on the Internet. It is an email spam checker tool that provides a wide range of data on suspect email activities.

Top Features

1. Reputation Checker: Spamhaus offers reputation checks, where users can check both IP and domain reputation scores. This feature is crucial to constantly monitor for optimum email deliverability.
   
   

2. Blocklists (DBL, XBL)

• DBL (Domain Block List): This list from Spamhaus monitors compromised machines and systems.

• XBL (Exploits Block List): The next list maintained by Spamhaus is the Exploits Block List. This list basically contains compromised machines, such as bots and other malware-infected systems that send spam.

3. Spamhaus Query Service (SQS): The Query Service acts as a real-time lookup to cross-check IP addresses and domains against Spamhaus’s massive database. This allows you to quickly determine if those sources are potentially associated with any spamming shenanigans before engaging with them. Spamhaus doesn’t just track spam; It also maintains sprawling blocklists loaded with the IP addresses, domains, and networks linked to known spammy culprits.

Pricing (Billed Annually)

Contact the sales team for custom pricing. 

13. Google Postmaster Tools

This is the first free tool in this list for those working on a budget. So, if you want to gain valuable insights into how Gmail’s systems are receiving and treating your emails, Google Postmaster Tools are a must-have tool. 

Using this tool, you can quickly identify potential issues and make informed adjustments to ensure your messages are connecting with recipients’ primary inboxes every time.

Top Features

1. Domain Reputation Tracking: Google Postmaster is known for providing accurate insights about your domain’s reputation. This information is extremely useful for learning how your Gmail emails are perceived in terms of spamminess and trustworthiness.

2. IP Reputation Monitoring: Just like domain reputation tracking, you can also track your IP address’s reputation and identify any issues specific to the IP that might affect your email deliverability.

3. Delivery Errors: Google Postmaster Tools reports on any delivery issues your emails might encounter, such as blocked messages or failing authentication checks. This can help you solve your deliverability-related problems and prevent future emails from going into the spam folder.

Pricing: Free 

14. Spamcheck 

SpamCheck by Postmark is a convenient online tool that analyzes your email and provides a score. By simply pasting your code directly onto the website, the system thoroughly analyzes your email and gives a score on a scale of 0 to 5.

Top Features

• Instant Spam Score Analysis: SpamCheck evaluates your email’s content by analyzing it against standard spam filters using the SpamAssassin rules, a popular method for identifying spammy characteristics in emails. 

• Real-time Suggestions: Beyond scoring, SpamCheck highlights specific parts of your email that could trigger spam filters. 

• Simple Integration: SpamCheck offers a straightforward API, which allows developers to integrate spam score testing directly into email systems or applications to make the process automated and seamless.​

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Free: $0 

• Startup Plan: $41/Month 

• Business Plan: $40/Month 

• Enterprise Plan: Custom

Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

Inframail is revolutionizing cold email infrastructure by offering unlimited inboxes for a single flat rate. 

It scales its cold email outreach efforts efficiently:

• Agencies

• Recruiters

• Sales development representatives (SDRs) 

Inframail provides the following to streamline the cold email process.: 

• Microsoft-backed deliverability

• Dedicated IP addresses

• Automated technical setup 

Forget Traditional Cold Email Providers: Inframail Handles the Technical Headaches So You Don’t Have To

Traditional cold email service providers charge per inbox, leaving you wrestling with technical configurations. Inframail is different. The robust email infrastructure handles the entire complex setup process so you can focus on reaching more prospects. 

Key features of Inframails’ service include: 

• Automated SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup

• Dedicated email servers for each user

• 16-hour priority support daily 

Get Your Outreach Campaign Off the Ground Fast with Inframails’ Cold Email Infrastructure

Inframail provides the robust email infrastructure to launch your outreach campaign without the usual technical headaches and per-inbox costs. Start buying domains now and set up your email infrastructure today with Inframails’ email infrastructure tool, whether you’re: 

• An agency looking to scale outreach

• A recruiter connecting with candidates

• An SDR driving sales

Related Reading

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• Soft Bounce Reasons
• Check Email Deliverability Score
• Soft Bounce vs Hard Bounce Email
• SalesHandy Alternatives
• GlockApps Alternative
• MailGenius Alternative
• MxToolbox Alternative
• Maildoso Alternatives