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Will email from my domain land in the inbox?

To test whether email from your domain will land, check five things: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, your MX records and how old the domain is. This tool checks all five from public DNS and tells you exactly what is wrong and the literal record to paste in where something is missing. There is no score, because a score does not fix anything. The most common problem it finds is a DMARC record set to p=none, which looks correct to any checker that only tests whether a record exists, and enforces nothing.

No signup. The result is yours before we ask for anything.

Run it on your own domain

Which words in my email look like spam?

Paste an email body and we will highlight the phrases filters weigh against you. Wording matters less than the records above, which is why this is the second box on the page.

How this works

  1. 1We query your domain’s TXT records for SPF and read the policy at the end of the record, which is the part that decides what receivers do.
  2. 2We query _dmarc on your domain and read the p= tag, distinguishing a policy that enforces from one that only monitors.
  3. 3We try thirteen common DKIM selectors. Selectors cannot be listed from DNS, so a miss means we did not guess yours rather than that you have none, and we say so.
  4. 4We query your MX records, and treat a null MX as what it is: a declaration that the domain accepts no mail.
  5. 5We read the registration date from the public RDAP registry, which is the successor to WHOIS.

What it cannot tell you

  • DKIM selectors are not enumerable from DNS. If we do not find a key, we report that we could not find one rather than that you do not have one.
  • We check whether authentication is configured, not whether your last campaign landed. Reputation depends on what you send and who complains, and no DNS lookup can see that.
  • A registry that does not publish a registration date gives us nothing, and we report that rather than estimating.
  • Passing every check does not guarantee the inbox. It removes the reasons a receiver would filter you before reading anything.

Questions people ask

How do I test email deliverability?

Check the five things receivers check: an SPF record naming who may send as you, a DKIM key signing your messages, a DMARC policy telling receivers what to do on failure, MX records so replies can reach you, and a domain old enough not to look disposable. Fix any that fail before sending volume.

How do I check my SPF and DKIM records?

SPF is a TXT record on your domain starting v=spf1. DKIM is a TXT record at selector._domainkey on your domain, where the selector is a name your mailbox provider chooses. Both are public, so anyone can read them, which is how receivers check you.

What is a good email deliverability score?

There is no such number, and a tool giving you one out of a hundred is inventing it. Each check either passes or does not. What matters is which specific record is wrong and what to replace it with.

Why do my emails go to spam?

Most often because authentication fails or does not enforce, so the receiver has no way to distinguish you from a forgery. After that: a domain registered weeks ago, sending volume that jumps suddenly, or recipients who never asked to hear from you. Wording matters least of these and is the thing most people change first.

What does p=none mean in DMARC?

It means monitor and do nothing. Receivers report failures to you and deliver the message anyway. It is a valid first step while you check your own reports, and it is not protection: a forged message still arrives.

The short version, if you would rather not run it

Deliverability is decided before anyone reads a word you wrote. A receiver checks whether the message really came from your domain, and it can only do that if you published records saying who sends on your behalf and what to do when something fails that test.

The failure worth understanding is the one that looks like success. A DMARC record with p=none is present, well-formed, and passes any tool that checks whether a record exists. It also tells receivers to deliver forgeries. Most domains that believe they have DMARC have exactly this.

SPF has a subtler version of the same problem. The record has a limit of ten DNS lookups, and every include: costs one. Add enough providers and the record exceeds the limit, at which point receivers stop evaluating it entirely. It still looks correct in a text editor.

Domain age is the part nobody can fix quickly. Filters weigh it heavily because a throwaway domain is the cheapest part of a spam operation. If your domain is weeks old, the answer is to send slowly to people who reply, for longer than feels necessary.

Wording is real and it is the smallest of these. A message with clean authentication from an established domain survives phrasing that would sink an unauthenticated one. Fix the records first.

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Will email from my domain land in the inbox? · InstinctGTM