🛡️ Free Tool

Free Email Deliverability Audit

Fifteen checks across authentication, list quality, sending practice and monitoring. Scored by impact, so you know what to fix first. Takes about ten minutes.

Critical gaps first

7 critical items still need attention.

Score is weighted. Critical items matter more than medium items.

Fix these first

• SPF is published for the sending domain: Add the SPF record your email platform gives you before sending more campaigns.
• DKIM signing is active: Add the DKIM CNAME or TXT records from your ESP and wait for validation.
• DMARC exists and is monitored: Publish a DMARC record before tightening policy to quarantine or reject.

Domain authentication

Monitoring

List quality

Sending practice

Compliance and trust

Content quality

What an Email Deliverability Audit Actually Checks

Email deliverability is one of those things where you can do everything right and still land in spam because a shared IP neighbour decided to blast a purchased list on Tuesday. It is weird. You are sending legitimate email to people who asked for it, and the whole thing still hinges on a dozen signals most people never look at.

So a deliverability audit is not a vibe check on your email design. It is a diagnostic across six areas, and the audit above walks all of them:

1. Domain authentication

SPF, DKIM and DMARC. These prove the email actually came from you. Missing any one of them is the single most common reason a sending setup fails, and it is also the easiest to fix, because it is a DNS task you do once and never touch again. If you want the full walkthrough, we wrote one on SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

The one people miss: sending from a branded domain rather than your platform's shared one. Share a domain, share a reputation. Fun.

2. List quality

Where did these addresses come from? If any part of the answer is "we imported a spreadsheet from a trade show in 2023", that is your problem and no amount of subject line testing fixes it. Purchased and scraped lists carry spam traps, and hitting enough of those craters your domain reputation in a way that takes months to undo.

This is also where list cleaning earns its keep. Every subscriber who never opens is quietly telling Gmail your mail is unwanted.

3. Sending practice

Volume consistency, ramp speed, and whether you send to engaged people before the full list. Going from 2,000 emails a month to 80,000 overnight looks exactly like what a compromised account looks like. Providers respond accordingly. If you are on a new domain, warm it up properly first.

4. Monitoring

Bounces suppressed automatically, complaints tracked, Google Postmaster Tools connected. Most accounts fail here not because the numbers are bad but because nobody is looking at them. You find out placement dropped when revenue drops, which is about six weeks too late.

5. Compliance and trust

A working unsubscribe, a real postal address, and a from name people recognise. Making unsubscribe hard does not keep subscribers. It converts them into spam complaints, which is strictly worse for you than a clean exit.

6. Content signals

Last, and genuinely least. Modern filters use engagement, not a banned word list. Spam trigger words mostly are not real. If someone tells you to avoid the word "free", ignore them and go fix your authentication instead.

Fix Them in This Order

The order matters more than the number of things you change. Most people fix five things at once, deliverability improves, and they have no idea which one did it. Then it breaks again and they are back to guessing.

Critical authentication failures. Nothing else matters until SPF, DKIM and DMARC are correct. This is not negotiable and it is not hard.
List quality. Suppress hard bounces, remove the people who have ignored you for six months, and stop importing things.
Sending practice. Ramp gradually, send to engaged segments first, keep volume steady.
Monitoring. So the next problem shows up as a number instead of a surprise.
Everything else. Content, design, send times. Real, but a rounding error next to the four above.

What This Audit Does Not Do

Worth being straight about. This checks the inputs that decide inbox placement. It does not measure your actual placement, because that needs seed testing across providers plus your Google Postmaster Tools history, and that needs access to the account.

That is fine, though. Seed test results are close to meaningless while authentication is broken, so you would be fixing this list first anyway.

When to Run One

Quarterly if things are healthy. Immediately if any of these just happened:

You changed email platforms (this is how that goes wrong)
You added a new sending domain or subdomain
Someone imported a list
Bounce rate or complaint rate jumped
Open rates dropped in a way that does not match what you sent

That last one is the tell most people miss. If your open rate falls and your content did not change, the content is not the problem.

Email Deliverability Score

Live DNS + blacklists. This checklist cannot see those from outside the account.

Run the live score →

Email Domain Scanner

SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX only. The authentication half of the score.

Scan DNS →

Going deeper

A checklist finds symptoms. Diagnosis is a different job.

Here is the awkward part about any deliverability checklist, including this one. It tells you what is missing. It does not tell you which missing thing is actually the one costing you revenue, and those are not the same question.

You can have a DMARC record at p=none, a slightly stale list and an inconsistent send schedule all at once. Three findings. Probably one root cause. Fixing all three works, but you have learned nothing and you cannot tell what to protect next quarter.

That is why we built EmailDDx, a differential diagnosis process borrowed from medicine. Symptom, then every possible cause, then evidence from the account, then tests that confirm or clear each one. You end up with causes ruled out as well as ruled in, and a treatment plan ranked by revenue impact rather than by what was easiest to spot.

See how EmailDDx works →

Email Deliverability Audit FAQ

What is an email deliverability audit?

A deliverability audit checks the things that decide whether your email reaches the inbox rather than spam: domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), how you collected the list, how you handle bounces and complaints, your sending patterns, and whether anyone is monitoring the result. It is a diagnostic, not a redesign. Nothing about how the email looks is part of it.

How long does a deliverability audit take?

This self-audit takes about ten minutes if you have access to your DNS records and your sending platform. A full manual audit of a live account, including seed testing and reviewing Google Postmaster Tools data, usually takes a few hours.

How often should I audit deliverability?

Quarterly for a healthy account, and immediately after any of these: changing email platform, adding a new sending domain, importing a list, a sudden bounce or complaint spike, or a drop in open rates that does not track with what you sent.

What is a good deliverability score?

On this audit, anything below 70% with critical items missing means you have structural problems that will keep costing you revenue. Above 85% with all critical items in place is a healthy setup. The score is weighted, so three critical failures hurt more than six medium ones.

Can I fix deliverability myself?

Most of it, yes. Authentication is a DNS task you do once. List hygiene and sending practice are decisions, not skills. The part that usually needs help is diagnosis: working out which of a dozen possible causes is actually the one hurting you, rather than fixing five things and hoping.

Does this audit check my actual inbox placement?

No. This checks the inputs that determine placement. Measuring actual placement needs seed testing across providers and your Google Postmaster Tools data, which requires access to the account. Fix the inputs first, because seed test results are meaningless if authentication is broken.

Want Someone Else to Run It?

Fifteen minutes, no pitch. We will look at your authentication, list quality and sending patterns, and tell you which one is actually hurting you.

Book a free deliverability audit →