Free Domain Health Check — Email Deliverability Score

Why Domain Health Matters for Email Deliverability

Email deliverability is not just about avoiding spam filters. It’s about building trust with mailbox providers through a combination of authentication protocols that verify your domain’s legitimacy. When SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are properly aligned, inbox placement rates can improve by 10–20%.

What We Check

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework) — Verifies which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain. A missing or misconfigured SPF record is one of the most common causes of email landing in spam.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) — Adds a cryptographic signature to outgoing messages, allowing recipients to verify the email was not tampered with in transit.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance) — Ties SPF and DKIM together and tells receiving servers what to do when authentication fails. Without DMARC, spoofed emails from your domain may go undetected.
• MX Records — Confirms your domain has valid mail exchange servers configured and reachable, which is fundamental for sending and receiving email.
• Blacklist Status — Checks whether your domain or its associated IPs appear on major DNS-based blacklists that ISPs use to filter spam.

How the Score is Calculated

Each check receives an individual score from 0 to 100. The overall health score is a weighted average: SPF (25%), DMARC (25%), DKIM (20%), MX (15%), and Blacklist (15%). This weighting reflects the relative importance of each protocol for deliverability in 2024 and beyond.

Improving Your Score

If your score is below 80, focus on the checks with the lowest individual scores first. Common quick wins include: publishing a DMARC record (even with p=none to start), fixing SPF records that have too many DNS lookups, and ensuring DKIM signing is enabled on your email service provider.