Writing a relevant, evocative sales email takes some serious thought.
The last thing you want is for those thoughtful emails to keep landing in prospects’ spam folders.
On average, 1 in 10 emails are rejected by receiving mailbox providers (MBPs). That’s a 10% dip in conversion rate just from email deliverability issues. And that’s the average — some companies have worse deliverability.
In this article, you’ll discover the 6 best email deliverability tools to improve inbox placement, track deliverability metrics, and stay compliant, so you can focus on making sales.
Table of contents: |
How to choose the right email deliverability software
To choose the right deliverability software for your business, consider the following factors:
- Company size and volume: Small businesses with low email volumes (<10,000/month) are usually fine with shared IP addresses and basic features, but enterprise brands often need dedicated IPs, advanced analytics, and custom integrations.
- Standard features: Look for tools with email authentication and security, email and deliverability analytics, real-time bounce management, and list validation tools.
- Sales tech stack integrations: Make sure the platform seamlessly integrates with the tools you use to send sales emails, from Gmail or Outlook to email automation platforms.
- Compliance features: The software should automate compliance with regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, including unsubscribe handling and consent tracking. This protects your business from legal issues.
- Cost: Evaluate pricing against your sending volume and potential ROI. Consider whether per-email, user-based, or feature-based pricing makes more sense for your business.
Pricing | Email engagement features | Deliverability Toolkit | Ideal user | |
Mailook | Free for up to 50 deliverability tests per month | Spam check, deliverability analysis, domain/IP blacklist check, DNS validation | Inbox placement tests, SPF/ DKIM/ DMARC validation, blacklist monitoring | Businesses and marketers seeking a free tool to monitor email deliverability |
Mixmax | Starts at $29 per user, per month (14-day free trial) |
Email automation, campaign builder, email templates and enhancements, auto-personalization, AI content creation, and more. |
Email volume limits, email personalization, unsubscribe links, authentication checker, email tracking, and more. | B2B revenue teams (sales, customer success, sales leaders) |
Bouncer | Starts at $25 per month | Not available — strictly an email verification and deliverability tool | Inbox placement testing, blocklist monitoring, email verification software, email toxicity check | Sales and marketing teams |
Constant Contact | Starts at $12 per month | Email designer, email templates, A/B testing, AI writing assistant | Email personalization, email tracking, blocklist management | Marketing teams |
Mailgun | Starts at $15 per month (10,000 emails) | Email API, inbound routing, email validation, detailed analytics, and deliverability tools. | Inbox placement testing, dedicated IPs, SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication, and detailed logs. |
Developers, SaaS companies, high-volume senders |
Postmark | Starts at $15 per month (10,000 emails) | Transactional email delivery, email templates, open and click tracking, inbound processing, webhooks. | High-speed delivery, authentication checks, suppression lists, and real-time engagement tracking. | Businesses needing reliable transactional email delivery |
6 best email deliverability tools
Below are the three best email deliverability software tools on the market. Read on to learn their features, use cases, pricing, and reviews.
1. Mailook
Mailook is a free email deliverability tool designed to help businesses ensure their emails land in recipients' primary inboxes rather than the spam folder. It provides insights into email performance and helps users identify and resolve deliverability issues by checking domain setups, email reputation, and IP blacklists.
Key features
- Deliverability checker
- Spam check
- Domain & IP blacklist check
- DNS record validation
Use cases
- Businesses aiming to improve email deliverability.
- Marketers seeking to ensure their campaigns reach the intended audience.
- Sales teams looking to optimize outreach efforts.
Pros
- Comprehensive deliverability analysis.
- Free to use.
Cons
- Limited advanced features for email marketing and sales professionals.
- No email automation or sequencing capabilities.
User reviews
- "A very helpful and easy solution to quickly check email deliverability and understand what's wrong with your emails." — Sarah, Marketing Manager.
Pricing
- Free: Users can run up to 50 deliverability tests per month. For additional tests, users can contact Mailook to expand their limitations.
Mailook is ideal for businesses seeking a free solution to monitor and improve their email deliverability, ensuring that their messages reach the intended recipients' inboxes.
2. Mixmax
Mixmax is an AI-powered sales engagement platform with industry-leading email deliverability.
By helping your team craft and send personalized sales emails at scale, Mixmax eliminates the biggest culprit of poor inbox placement: spray and pray outreach.
"Spray and pray" is a sales email tactic where you send generic messages to large lead lists without personalization. The approach frustrates recipients, who mark messages as spam. And as spam complaints accumulate, your sender reputation drops, hurting your email deliverability.
Fortunately, Mixmax makes it easy to write great emails that never get spam complaints:
Use Mixmax sales email sequence software and AI Compose to quickly create personalized email sequences that come across like manually written messages.
Another way Mixmax helps you improve email deliverability is by tracking email metrics like open, click, and reply rates.
Knowing how your recipients are interacting with your emails helps you identify ways to improve these metrics, which, in turn, improves deliverability.
That’s because low email engagement is a clear signal to ISPs that your emails might be spam, so the higher your open rates, the likelier your emails are to end up in the inbox.
Mixmax allows you to track email opens in Gmail, and if you use Microsoft, it also offers email tracking for Outlook.
In addition to its email personalization features, Mixmax also offers other traditional deliverability tools, such as the ability to check if your domain has DMARC, DKIM, and SPF is set up.
You can also add unsubscribe links to your email sequences, which is crucial, since emails without this option are more likely to be mistaken for spam.
Key features
- Multichannel sequence builder
- Daily send limits (large email volumes is a sign of spam)
- Automated email personalization
- AI-powered email writing
- Email tracking and reports
- Email templates and enhancements
- Automated follow ups
- AI tools for sales
Use cases
- Revenue teams looking to improve email engagement and boost deliverability as a result.
- B2B companies looking to track email open rates, CTR, and other success metrics.
- Sales teams that want to automate outreach without sacrificing personalization and looking spammy.
Pros
- Use Mixmax directly from your email inbox
- Integrations with top email tools and CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot
Cons
- No blocklist monitoring
- Might have more email engagement
User reviews
“Mixmax is my sales engagement tool of choice because it’s simple enough to set up in an afternoon. But powerful enough to support your entire sales org.” — Jason Bay, CEO of Outbound Squad
“We segment the highest-value people in our list and send emails through Mixmax instead of a large email campaign that can get flagged. Instead of getting a 10% open rate through a normal mass email campaign, we’re getting about 70%.” — Nick Sonnenberg, CEO at Leverage
Pricing
- Free: Email link tracking and meeting booking
- SMB: $29 per user, per month
- Growth: $49 per user, per month
- Growth + CRM: $69 per user, per month
- Custom: Contact sales for pricing
- Try the 14-day free trial
Case study
To improve customer engagement, Leverage started using Mixmax to manage their outbound communications. Thanks to Mixmax’s high deliverability and automated sequences, Leverage was able to get a 70% open rate for their emails and improved sales productivity. Read the full case study here.
3. Bouncer
Bouncer is an email verification and email deliverability service that helps businesses improve the quality of their data and protect their sender reputation.
In addition to verification tools like bulk verify, Bouncer offers an email deliverability toolkit.
The suite includes an inbox placement test, which you can use to see what percentage of your emails are actually landing in the prospect’s inbox versus the spam folder.
It also comes with blocklist monitoring, which allows you to receive alerts if your IPs or domains are listed on any blocklists.
The company also offers deliverability consulting, so you can meet with experts to identify the source of your deliverability issues and create a plan to fix it.
Key features
- Email verification software
- Blocklist monitoring
- Inbox placement testing
- Deliverability consulting
- Data enrichment
Use cases
- B2B sales teams that want a suite of deliverability testing tools to improve their inbox placement
- Businesses looking to bulk verify their email lists and enrich them with updated data
Pros
- Various deliverability testing tools
- Intuitive interface
Cons
- Sometimes no explanation for why emails are flagged
- Slow bulk email verification
User reviews
“Its ease of use, reliability, and stellar customer service make it an indispensable tool for anyone who relies on email communication.” — Anna P.
Pricing
For the Deliverability Kit:
- Starter: $25 per month (250 test emails)
- Standard: $125 per month (1000 test emails)
- Pro: $250 per month (2500 test emails)
- Enterprise: Custom (unlimited test emails)
4. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is an email marketing platform for writing, sending, and managing email marketing campaigns. The platform comes with various tools that help businesses improve their email deliverability rates.
For example, it offers list management tools that enable users to maintain clean subscriber lists by automatically removing bounced and unsubscribed emails.
Constant Contact also offers an AI assistant that helps you build email campaigns that your recipients will want to open, thus boosting your sender reputation.
Key features
- Email campaign creation
- Email authentication check for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC
- Blocklist management
- Dedicated or shared IP addresses
- Email tracking
Use cases
- Marketers who want to create email campaigns and track their performance
- Businesses looking for basic email deliverability tools like blocklist management
Pros
- Easy to use
- Advanced list segmentation
Cons
- Limited automation capabilities
- Customer support can be unresponsive
User reviews
“Very straightforward and easy to use. Creating templates, creating emails, customization etc. is easy. The analytics get the job done as well if you're looking for simple metrics such as open rates, CTR, bounce rate etc.” — Rahul A.
“It can feel a little basic if you're looking for advanced features, and the pricing can get a bit steep as your list grows. Also, some of the reporting options aren’t as detailed as other platforms.” — Isabella P.
Pricing
Pricing depends on your number of contacts.
- Lite: Starts at $12 per month. (1 user)
- Standard: Starts at $35 per month. (3 users)
- Premium: Starts at $80 per month. (unlimited users)
5. Mailgun
Mailgun is an email deliverability platform designed for developers, offering robust APIs for sending, receiving, and tracking emails. It focuses on high deliverability and scalability, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes.
Key features:
- Email API
- Email validation
- Inbound email routing
- Analytics and reporting
- Deliverability tools
Use cases:
- Businesses requiring reliable transactional email delivery.
- Developers needing flexible email APIs for application integration.
- Organizations aiming to improve email deliverability and engagement.
Pros:
- Comprehensive API documentation and developer tools.
- Scalable plans suitable for various business sizes.
- Advanced deliverability features and analytics.
Cons:
- Some advanced features may require higher-tier plans.
- The platform may have a learning curve for non-developers.
User reviews:
“Mailgun delivers emails efficiently with great deliverability, and their support is quick and helpful.” — Ana
Pricing:
- Free: $0/month, includes 100 emails per day.
- Basic: Starting at $15/month for 10,000 emails
- Foundation: $35/month for 50,000 emails
- Scale: $90/month for 100,000 emails
Additional emails are billed at a per-1,000 rate, decreasing with higher-tier plans.
6. Postmark
Postmark is a cloud-based email management service specializing in transactional email delivery. It emphasizes speed and reliability, ensuring that critical emails like password resets and notifications reach recipients promptly.
Key features:
- Transactional email delivery
- Email templates
- Open and click tracking
- Inbound processing
- Webhooks
Use cases:
- Businesses focusing on transactional emails requiring high deliverability.
- Teams needing detailed analytics on email performance.
- Organizations looking for reliable email infrastructure without marketing email capabilities.
Pros:
- Exceptional speed and reliability for transactional emails.
- User-friendly interface with comprehensive documentation.
- Transparent pricing with no hidden fees.
Cons:
- Not designed for bulk marketing emails.
- Higher pricing tiers may be costly for large-scale senders.
User reviews:
“Postmark has improved both the look and deliverability of transactional emails in my business, and it's also simplified our email workflows and made it easier for us to analyse and resolve any issues.” — Anonymous, Capterra
Pricing:
- Basic: $15/month for 10,000 emails; additional emails at $1.80 per 1,000.
- Pro: $60.50/month for 50,000 emails; additional emails at $1.30 per 1,000.
- Platform: $138/month for 125,000 emails; additional emails at $1.10 per 1,000.
All plans include features like SMTP and REST API access, with higher tiers offering additional benefits.
Key features to look for in an email deliverability software
From email analytics to list management, here are some of the best email deliverability features for B2B sales teams.
Email personalization at scale
Creating relevant emails that your prospects open is key to maintaining a good sender reputation, since low engagement rates are a sign to ISPs that your emails are spam.
Therefore, look for tools like Mixmax that enable you to auto-personalize emails with variable fields and per-recipient customization within sequences.
In this same spirit of boosting engagement, also look for in-platform email enhancements, AI-powered smart email scheduling, and a variety of professional-looking email templates.
Email authentication
Essential protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC verify your sender identity and protect your domain reputation. A good system should enable you to check if your domain is in line with these protocols.
Analytics depth
Reporting should show delivery rates, opens, clicks, and bounces by campaign. Advanced features like inbox placement testing and blocklist monitoring can also help optimize email performance.
Real-time bounce management
The software should automatically handle hard and soft bounces to maintain list hygiene. This includes immediate suppression of invalid addresses and smart retry logic for temporary failures.
List validation tools
Look for email verification features that can clean lists before sending and validate addresses in real-time. This protects your sender reputation and keeps you from sending emails to inaccurate email addresses.
Benefits of using an email deliverability software
In addition to providing you with better inbox placement and sender reputation, email deliverability platforms also give you the following:
- Better email campaigns: Knowing that email engagement = higher deliverability, many of these platforms come with tools for efficiently creating more personalized emails campaigns.
- Peace of mind: With deliverability taken care of, there’s no more worrying that your well-crafted email campaigns are never going to reach your leads. And if your deliverability does happen to be low, these tools will tell you and help you figure out why.
- More sales: The higher your email deliverability, the more leads you reach. This inevitably results in more booked meetings and higher sales revenue. Often, it’s the little things like deliverability that add up to a successful sales organization.
Use Mixmax to boost email delivery and engagement
Email deliverability software tools boost your email inbox placement and help you reach your target audience.
But, more than technical features like inbox placement testing, the quality of your sales emails is what matters most. Blasting out emails that are generic and irrelevant will hurt your open rates and sender reputation.
So consider using an email engagement tool like Mixmax that automatically personalizes your sales emails, allowing you to hit your outreach numbers without sacrificing quality.
Frequently asked questions about email deliverability tools
What is email deliverability software?
Email deliverability software helps businesses ensure their emails reach recipients' inboxes instead of getting blocked or marked as spam. These tools improve sender reputation, monitor email performance, verify email lists, and ensure compliance with authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Some platforms also provide inbox placement testing, blocklist monitoring, and email personalization features to boost engagement.
What is a good email deliverability rate?
A good email deliverability rate is typically 95% or higher, meaning that at least 95% of your emails successfully reach recipients' inboxes. If your deliverability rate drops below 90%, it indicates potential issues with your sender reputation, email content, or authentication setup. Improving engagement rates, maintaining a clean email list, and following email best practices can help keep your deliverability high.
What are key metrics for email delivery?
Key email delivery metrics include delivery rate (percentage of emails successfully delivered), inbox placement rate (percentage of emails that land in the inbox rather than spam), bounce rate (percentage of emails that failed to deliver), open rate (percentage of recipients who opened the email), click-through rate (percentage of recipients who clicked a link), and spam complaint rate (percentage of recipients who marked the email as spam). Monitoring these metrics helps identify deliverability issues and improve email performance.
What factors affect email deliverability?
Several factors influence email deliverability, including sender reputation, email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), email list quality, engagement rates, email content, sending frequency, and compliance with spam regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM. Poor sender practices, such as sending bulk unsolicited emails or using spam-triggering words, can harm deliverability. Using deliverability software, warming up your domain, and focusing on email personalization can help improve inbox placement.