Best email deliverability tools to improve inbox placement

Here’s the sad truth. You can do everything right in an email marketing campaign (craft compelling subject lines, create engaging content, have an unbeatable offer, personalize email send time), and still fail to nurture and convert subscribers. 

The possible culprit? Email deliverability. 

Your marketing efforts count for little if emails don’t land in your subscribers’ inboxes. Spam filters, authentication issues, and sender reputation can make or break an email campaign. You need the right tools to ensure your emails reach your customers.

This article explores ten of the best email deliverability tools on the market. We’ll discover what a good email deliverability rate is and the common issues that affect it.

What is email deliverability?

Email deliverability refers to emails that land in subscribers’ inboxes. That matters because poor deliverability affects open and click rates. People can’t read or engage with emails they don’t know exist. 

Just because an email report status reads ‘delivered’ doesn’t mean it has reached the intended audience. It could have landed in the spam folder, the ‘promotions’ tab (Gmail), or the ‘other’ tab (Outlook). 

Email deliverability depends on a variety of factors.

• Sender reputation – the trustworthiness of the sender
• Email authentication – the legitimacy of the sender
• List quality – the degree of engagement within email lists
• Email content – the quality of content within emails

Email clients will block or send your emails to junk folders if you have a history of spam complaints, high bounce rates, or poorly formatted emails. 

Email deliverability shouldn’t be confused with email delivery. Email delivery tracks how many emails the receiving email service provider accepts. You can have a high email delivery rate even if half your emails end up in the junk folder. So, while email delivery is a useful metric, it doesn’t tell the whole story. 

You can get the full story in our email deliverability graphic novel. 

What is a good email deliverability rate?

Email deliverability rates vary by industry and email type. However, benchmarks suggest the following:

• Excellent: 95% and above
• Good: 85 – 94%
• Acceptable: 84 – 70%
• Poor: 70% and below.

To calculate email deliverability, divide the number of emails delivered (to inboxes) by the total number of emails sent and multiply by 100. So, if 890 out of 1,000 emails pass spam filters and land in recipients’ inboxes, your deliverability rate is 89%. 

A comparative study of 15 popular email marketing tools found an average deliverability rate of 83.1%. That means 16.9% of emails bounced or landed in spam folders. 

Source

According to their methodology, deliverability rates above 89% were considered excellent. Anything below 83% was considered poor. 

Best email deliverability tools in 2025

Choosing the right email software can be challenging if you don’t know what features to look for. The best email deliverability tools have two or more of the following features to ensure subscribers see your marketing emails. 

• Email validation checks the correct structure of email addresses.
• Email verification confirms that email addresses are real and active.
• Spam checker analyzes email content and structure for spam triggers.
• Authentication checker verifies domain and IP address legitimacy.
• Reputation monitoring analyzes sender reputation to determine your status with email clients.
• Inbox placement monitors where your email lands (primary inbox, secondary folders, or spam folders).

Here’s a quick overview of the tools.

	Key features	Starting price
GetResponse	Built-in spam checker, send time optimization, automated email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), dedicated IP, assisted IP warm-up, email validation, reputation monitoring, compliance	Free (up to 500 contacts), then $19/month for 1,000 contacts
GlockApps	Spam checker, email seed list, inbox placement monitoring, reputation & blocklist monitoring, DMARC analyzer, Google Postmaster Tool integration, SPF/DKIM/DMARC checkers	Free plan with limited credits, then $85/month
Constant Contact	Email authentication, dedicated IP (add-on), IP reputation monitoring, compliance (CAN-SPAM, GDPR), deliverability team monitoring	$12/month for 500 contacts
Warmy	Automated email warm-up, email seed list, inbox placement test, SPF/DMARC generators, deliverability monitoring	Custom pricing with 7-day free trial
Folderly	Spam checker, SPF/DMARC generators, inbox placement monitoring, domain reputation monitoring, daily email warm-up (advanced algorithms), real-time spam placement alerts	$120/mailbox/month
Instantly	Automated warm-up emails, email verification, inbox placement tests, spam checker, blacklist monitoring, email authentication	$37/month
Mx Toolbox	Blacklist monitoring, delivery performance reports, inbox placement analysis, server tester, domain health checker, DMARC checker	Free (basic features), then $129/month
Brevo	Dedicated IP (add-on), reputation monitoring, email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), bounce and unsubscribe list cleaning	Free (300 emails/day), then $8.08/month
Everest	Inbox placement insights, email validation (BriteVerify), reputation monitoring, email authentication, Sender Certification (higher plans)	$20/month
Intuit Mailchimp	Email authentication, dedicated IP (add-on), Omnivore list scanner, reputation monitoring, campaign reporting for deliverability insights	Free (1,000 sends/month), then $13/month

The software you choose depends on your needs and budget. Let’s examine the top deliverability tools indepth to find the right one for you. 

GetResponse

GetResponse is a comprehensive marketing solution. In addition to email marketing, we provide SMS marketing, landing page builders, webinar hosting, and online course creation. We help customers build email lists, engage customers, and monetize products.

GetResponse offers several email deliverability features to enhance inbox placement. 

Our built-in spam check tool enables you to review email content for spam before you send it out. Furthermore, we automatically remove email addresses with bounces, spam complaints, and unsubscribe requests to keep your email list clean. 

Our zero-tolerance policy to spam has placed us in good standing with all major internet service providers. We consistently score above 90% on email deliverability tools like Sender Score, Email Tool Tester, and Email Deliverability Report. We also work with mailbox providers and blocklist operators to stay informed on best practices and new regulations. 

All domains created on our shared IP addresses benefit from our established reputation and are automatically authenticated with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configurations. We also provide dedicated IP addresses and assisted IP warmup for high-volume senders, enabling them to build a unique sender reputation. 

We are 100% committed to email deliverability. That’s why we manage it in-house, giving our users complete control of their marketing campaigns. 

Deliverability features

• Built-in spam checker
• Send Time optimization
• Automated email authentication
• Dedicated IP address
• Assisted IP warmup
• Email validation and verification integration
• Reputation monitoring
• Industry and regulatory compliance (M3AAWG, CSA, Spam Signal, GDPR, and CAN-SPAM)

Pricing

We have four pricing tiers. 

• Starter: $19 monthly for 1,000 contacts
• Marketer: $59 monthly for 1,000 contacts
• Creator: $69 monthly for 1,000 contacts
• Enterprise at custom pricing

We also have a free plan for up to 500 contacts. Key deliverability features are available on all paid plans. These include the spam check tool, email verification, and custom DKIM. Dedicated sending domains are only available to high-volume senders on the Enterprise plan. 

Try all our features on a 30-day free trial. 

Glock Apps

Glock Apps is an email deliverability tool that helps businesses monitor, test, and solve deliverability issues. The platform’s key product is Inbox Insights, which offers inbox placement monitoring, spam testing, and domain & IP analytics.

With inbox placement monitoring, you get real-time insights into where marketing emails land, whether in recipients’ inboxes, junk folders, or sub-folders. Use the platform’s seed list (includes Outlook, Gmail, and Yahoo email addresses) to see where your emails land. 

The spam testing feature evaluates emails across major filters, like Google, Barracuda, and SpamAssassin. In addition to a spam score, you get insights and actionable recommendations to improve deliverability. 

Domain and IP analytics help protect your sender reputation with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC monitoring, ensuring alignment with essential authentication protocols. This includes checking if your domain or IP appears in over 50 blocklists.

Another product of note is the DMARC analyzer. This email deliverability tool tracks and prevents unauthorized use of your domain.

Deliverability features

• Spam checker
• Email seed list
• Inbox placement monitoring
• Reputation monitoring
• Block list monitoring
• Automated email authentication
• Google Postmaster Tool integration

Pricing

Glock Apps has three paid plans.

• Essentials: $85 monthly for 30 spam test credits and 50,000 DMARC messages.
• Growth: $142 monthly for 90 spam test credits and 100,000 DMARC messages.
• Enterprise: $185 monthly for 150 spam test credits and 1,000,000 DMARC messages.

There is also a free plan that offers 2 spam test credits and 10,000 DMARC messages. The spam, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC checkers are free and available to all users. 

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a simple email marketing service that lets you create automated email, SMS, and social media campaigns using the email builder or templates. 

Constant Contact ensures deliverability for users through email authentication and reputation monitoring features.

All emails sent through the shared IP address receive basic authentication (DKIM and DMARC) to protect emails from phishing and spoofing scams. The platform also offers dedicated IP services for high-volume senders with specific deliverability requirements. 

A dedicated deliverability team monitors the shared IP reputation for spam trap hits using third-party tools like Spamhaus and Barracuda Central. 

In addition to these features, Constant Contact has a strict spam policy: your account is reviewed if more than 0.1% of your emails are marked as spam. They also prohibit the use of purchased lists and monitor signups and list uploads for suspicious activity. 

Deliverability features:

• Email authentication
• Dedicated IP address
• IP reputation monitoring
• Regulatory compliance (CAN-SPAM and GDPR)

Pricing

• Lite: $12 monthly for 500 contacts, 10X number of contacts monthly email sends
• Standard: $35 monthly for 500 contacts, 12X number of contacts monthly email sends
• Premium: $80 monthly for 500 contacts, 24X number of contacts monthly email sends

There is a 14-day free trial. Deliverability features are available to all users. The dedicated IP address service is an add-on for those who want an extra layer of protection. 

Warmy

Like Glock Apps, Warmy is an email software that helps businesses monitor and solve deliverability issues. The email deliverability test platform evaluates email content, engagement, and authentication for spam triggers across multiple email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, Zoho). 

While Glock Apps monitors email authentication protocols, Warmy goes a step further. The SPF and DMARC generators allow you to specify which domains are authorized to send messages and what to do with unauthorized emails.  

Warmy offers a specialized service – email warm-up. Sending bulk messages from a new email account looks suspicious. However, you can build a positive sender reputation, avoid spam filters, and improve inbox placement rates if you gradually increase email volume. 

At Warmy, that involves automatically generating personalized messages on industry-related topics. That way, you warm up emails, email templates, domains, and IP addresses. 

Deliverability features

• Automated email warm-up
• Email seed list
• Inbox placement test
• Email authentication
• Deliverability monitoring

Pricing

Warmy has separate plans for B2B and B2C senders. You can also customize pricing depending on your needs. Warmy doesn’t list prices on its website. However, you can test its features on a 7-day free trial.  

Folderly

Folderly is an email deliverability platform that helps businesses manage sender reputation and improve inbox placement rates. It does this through three products: Folderly, Inbox Insights, and Pulse.

The Folderly product boosts sender reputation through daily upkeep and best practices. That involves daily tracking email placement, reviewing content for spam triggers, and recommending actionable steps. Daily upkeep is also an email warm-up, using advanced algorithms to increase email volume in two weeks. 

Inbox insights help you understand the factors affecting your email deliverability by monitoring and analyzing email placement as well as domain and IP health. 

Pulse detects deliverability issues in real time, alerting you when your email hits the junk folder. 

Deliverability features

• Spam checker
• SPF generator
• DMARC generator
• Inbox placement monitoring
• Domain reputation monitoring

Pricing

Folderly costs $120/mailbox/month. 

Folderly also provides several products at different prices. The Inbox Insights product lets you monitor email placement, DNS records, and IPs. There’s a free plan that lets you run 2 tests per month. Paid plans go for $79/month or $64/month for the annual plan. Both support unlimited tests. 

The Pulse product monitors spam placement and sends you alerts via SMS, Slack, and email.  Pricing for Pulse is not available on the website, but you can start for free. 

Instantly

Instantly specializing in email warm-up. They can set up a domain and email accounts for you to start the warmup process. Alternatively, you can use their pre-warmed domains and account to send warmup emails. 

The warmup system is completely automated and requires just one click to start. It uses over one million real email accounts to build sender reputation. 

Besides email warm-up, Instantly offers unlimited, automated inbox placement tests for major inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook. You can view your deliverability score and see how many of your emails land in the spam folder.

Deliverability features

• Warm-up emails
• Email verification
• Inbox placement tests
• Spam checker
• Blacklist monitoring
• Email authentication

Pricing

Instantly has three pricing plans.

• Growth: $37 monthly
• Hypergrowth: $97 monthly
• Light speed: $358 monthly

All plans have unlimited email accounts, unlimited warm-up, and reputation protection. You can start with the 14-day free trial.

MxToolbox

Your emails will always land in the spam folder if your technical setup is wrong. That’s why MxToolbox focuses on domain health to ensure robust inbox placement. It provides a wide range of diagnostic tools for email and network performance. However, it doesn’t fix reported email issues. 

The delivery center provides insight into your email configuration. It tells you who’s sending emails from your domain, the location of senders, and your email authentication status. You also get a complete analysis of domain reputation, including adaptive blacklist monitoring. 

MxToolbox also monitors your inbox with placement and complaint reports. The inbox placement report tells you where your email lands when you send emails to their test inboxes. The inbox complaints feature collects and analyzes feedback from DMARC Forensics and mailbox providers. These include spam marking, unsubscribes, and failed email sends. 

Deliverability features

• Blacklist monitoring
• Delivery performance reports
• Inbox placement analysis
• Server tester
• Domain health checker
• DMARC checker

Pricing

MxToolbox has two paid plans.

• Delivery center: $129 monthly for 5 domains and 500,000 emails
• Delivery center plus: $399 monthly for 5 domains and 5,000,000 emails

There’s a free plan, but features are limited. Users get one domain and weekly blacklist monitoring. They don’t have access to deliverability or inbox placement reports. 

Brevo

Brevo is an all-in-one marketing platform. It provides multi-channel marketing, sales engagement, and customer relationship management services in one platform. Users can manage customer relationships via email, text, chat, and WhatsApp. 

Built on SMTP infrastructure, Brevo promises deliverability through email authentication, reputation monitoring, and list hygiene. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols verify the sender’s legitimacy, preventing spoofing and phishing scams. They also provide dedicated IP services for high-volume senders.

Brevo doesn’t have a comprehensive deliverability report, but the analytics feature allows you to monitor your sender reputation. The campaign statistic report highlights performance metrics, including the number of soft and hard bounces (i.e., emails that couldn’t be delivered). 

Although it’s a limited feature, Brevo helps users maintain clean email lists by automatically removing email addresses that bounce or unsubscribe. You will need third-party tools to verify and validate your contacts proactively.  

Deliverability features

• Dedicated IP address
• Reputation monitoring

Pricing

There are three paid plans for its marketing suite.

• Starter: $8.08 monthly for 5,000 emails
• Business: $16.17 monthly for 5,000 emails
• Enterprise at custom pricing

Brevo has a free plan for 300 emails per day. Deliverability features are available to all users, with a dedicated IP address as an add-on service. 

Everest (by Validity)

Everest, the email deliverability platform by Validity, helps marketers avoid spam folders with inbox placement insights, reputation monitoring, and list validation. When you join the Sender Certification program, you become a trusted sender, allowing you to bypass spam filters. Your account also receives 24/7 monitoring for suspicious activity and changes in email performance metrics. 

Everest’s inbox placement tool uses a global seed list to test where emails land. You can compare placement metrics by email client or region, and determine if placement issues are specific to you or impact all senders.   

Everest combines reputation signals from mailbox providers, spam traps, and block lists, alerting you to deliverability issues in real time. The platform uses BriteVerify to remove bad email addresses before you hit send. This reduces bounce rates.

Everest also supports email authentication monitoring and reporting to your domain from cyber threats. 

Deliverability features

• Inbox placement
• Email validation
• Reputation monitoring
• Email authentication

Pricing

Everest has four pricing plans.

• Elements: $20 monthly for 5 inbox placement tests and 100 email validations
• Elements Plus: $525 monthly for 10 inbox placements and 1,400 email validations
• Professional: custom pricing
• Enterprise: custom pricing

Everyone has access to the reputation monitoring feature. However, the Sender Certification program is only open to Professional and Enterprise users. There is no free plan or trial, but you can schedule a demo to see the features in action. 

Intuit Mailchimp Email Marketing

Mailchimp is a renowned retail and e-commerce email marketing platform offering a wide range of features to ensure your social and email marketing success.

Mailchimp actively protects its sending reputation to ensure email marketing deliverability. Its Omnivore system scans email lists and alerts users of addresses that would likely activate spam traps or generate hard bounces. Note that it doesn’t remove these addresses. You will need third-party tools to clean your list before you can send emails to that particular audience. 

All emails sent through the shared IP address receive basic authentication to protect emails from phishing and spoofing scams. The platform also offers dedicated IP addresses as an add-on service for high-volume senders. 

Beyond these, the campaign reports provide indirect insight into inbox placement by highlighting unsubscribes, bounces, and spam complaints. 

Deliverability features

• Email authentication
• Reputation monitoring

Pricing

Mailchimp has three paid plans. 

• Essentials: $13 monthly for 500 contacts
• Standard: $20 monthly for 500 contacts
• Premium: $350 monthly for 10,000 contacts

The free plan offers 1,000 email sends monthly. Deliverability features are available to all users. 

Common email deliverability challenges (and their solutions)

While a reliable email software is a critical component of high inbox placement, it’s not the only one. Earlier, we mentioned factors that affect email deliverability. Addressing them is key to ensuring your emails reach subscribers. 

1. High bounce rates

Email bounce rates measure the percentage of emails that weren’t delivered to recipients. There are two reasons for this. 

• Hard bounces are permanent delivery issues caused by non-existent, invalid, or blocked email addresses.
• Soft bounces are temporary delivery problems caused by full inboxes, oversized emails, blocked content, or server issues.

A high bounce rate (more than 2%) carries significant consequences. It degrades your sender reputation, leading to even lower deliverability and potential blacklisting. 

Monitor your email software’s report to identify which email addresses frequently bounce and why. For hard bounces, clean your email lists by removing outdated, invalid, or inactive email addresses. For soft bounces, optimize email content by minimizing file size. 

2. Incorrect email authentication 

Incorrect email authentication occurs when servers can’t confirm that the email sender is who they say they are. This happens when the receiving server doesn’t recognize the sending server or the encryption keys show signs of tampering.

The solution is to implement and regularly update the following protocols.

• SPF (sender policy framework) verifies that emails come from authorized servers.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) ensures email content integrity.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) defines the handling of unauthenticated emails.

Email authentication verifies the origin and legitimacy of email messages. Without it, you’re at risk for phishing and spoofing attacks. Moreover, email clients mark emails as suspicious when they fail authentication checks. That lowers your sender reputation. 

3. Spam words and content

Many mailbox providers have spam traps to identify and block suspicious senders. These include sophisticated filters that analyze email content for spammy words, formatting issues, and image-to-text ratios. 

Overly promotional subject lines, excessive punctuation, broken links, and poor email design trigger spam filters. The antidote, therefore, is crafting good emails. 

Start with accurate and engaging email subject lines. According to Invesp, 69% of emails are reported as spam based on the subject line alone. Next, structure emails in an easy-to-digest format, with clear headlines, images, and scannable content. 

Finally, avoid trigger words like “You’ve won,” “Risk free,” “Free money,” or “Urgent.” 

4. Poor sender reputation

Email clients use sender reputation to determine whether to place emails in recipients’ inboxes or spam folders. 

A poor sender reputation, as evidenced by a history of high bounce rates, low engagement, spam complaints, inconsistent sending practices, and lack of authentication, tells receiving email providers that your emails are untrustworthy.

Strengthen your sender reputation by maintaining low bounce rates, engaging subscribers, implementing authentication protocols, and adopting email best practices like consistent sender names/addresses and email cadence. 

Solutions like Google Postmaster Tools provide insight into your IP and domain reputation score, including spam rates, delivery errors, encryption rate, and authentication status.

5. Inactive subscribers

Inactive subscribers are a drag on your engagement metrics, and that can have a negative impact on email deliverability. 

Engagement signals email relevance. Low engagement tells mailbox providers not to place your messages in recipients’ inboxes because they are unwanted or not valuable. However, not all engagement is good engagement.

• Positive engagement tracks open rates, click-through rates, replies, and rescues (making emails ‘not junk’). These metrics help email deliverability.
• Negative engagement tracks actions such as unsubscribing, marking emails as junk, and deleting emails without opening them. These user behaviors hurt email deliverability.

There are two ways to manage inactive subscribers: re-engage or remove. 

Segment lists to deliver relevant and targeted content. Craft compelling subject lines to entice subscribers to open emails and add interactive content (polls, quizzes, videos) to boost engagement. 

You also want to make calls to action visible to ensure recipients take the desired next step. 

If re-engagement fails, remove inactive subscribers. 

6. Poor list hygiene

A healthy email list consists of valid and active email addresses. To keep it that way, you must practice proper list hygiene to keep it that way. List hygiene involves cleaning invalid and inactive contacts and attracting subscribers through consent-based mechanisms. 

We’ve already mentioned how outdated and inactive email addresses affect email deliverability by increasing bounce rates and lowering engagement rates. So, we’ll discuss why subscriber acquisition is also important. 

Buying email lists is tempting, but you risk severe consequences. Contacting people who haven’t opted in to receive your emails doesn’t just increase the number of spam complaints, it violates the GDPR and other data privacy regulations. 

Email deliverability tools with email validation and verification tools identify and remove problematic email addresses. We also recommend using double opt-in, which requires subscribers to verify their email address and confirm interest. 

7. No unsubscribe option

What happens when subscribers no longer want to receive your emails? They unsubscribe or mark your emails as spam. 

You are better off having a visible unsubscribe option than not. Unsubscribing doesn’t affect email deliverability. However, spam complaints do. Moreover, the ability to opt out of marketing messages is a GDPR requirement. 

You want to make it easy for subscribers to opt out of your email lists. That means a visible unsubscribe link in all your emails. It will reduce the number of spam complaints and help maintain good list hygiene. 

Consider allowing subscribers to adjust email frequency or opt out of some communications rather than fully unsubscribing. 

Conclusion

Getting emails into inboxes should be a priority for marketers and business owners. Even the best-crafted emails fail to deliver results when they don’t reach the intended audience. Using specialized email deliverability tools helps you stay out of spam folders, ensuring customers see your marketing messages.

We discussed the top email deliverability tools and how they boost inbox placement. They come with features that go beyond spam checks, offering analysis and insight into sender reputation, list hygiene, and email security compliance. But which should you choose? 

The answer depends on your business needs. If you have an established marketing infrastructure, choose software, like MxToolbox and Warmy, that focuses on specific deliverability functionality. If you need a comprehensive solution that prioritizes deliverability, GetResponse has you covered.