Inbox Placement Tester
Score your cold email setup against 8 critical deliverability factors. Each item is worth 12.5 points — see your estimated inbox placement rate and what to fix.
Deliverability Checklist
Check each item that applies to your current email setup.
What a real placement test looks like
A genuine inbox placement test sends seed emails to accounts at each major provider, then reports where each one landed. Here's the shape of the result you'd expect from a well-configured domain:
The checklist above estimates this. A real seed-based test confirms it.
Why these 8 factors matter
Inbox placementis the percentage of your emails that land in the primary inbox — not spam, not promotions, not blocked. It's the metric that actually determines whether cold outreach works.
The checklist above scores the eight signals that receiving servers use to decide where your email lands. Authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is the foundation. Reputation (warmup, dedicated IP, bounce rate, blocklist status) builds on top of it. Compliance (unsubscribe header) keeps you on the right side of Google and Yahoo's 2024 bulk sender requirements.
The placement score thresholds
88-100A / A+ — Expected placement 90-95%. Strong setup; keep monitoring.63-87B — Expected placement 60-90%. Fix the missing items before scaling volume.38-62C / D — Expected placement 20-60%. Half your sends are wasted. Stop and rebuild.0-37F — Expected placement below 20%. Cold email won't work until authentication and warmup are fixed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Going deeper on inbox placement
The checklist scores the inputs. These guides explain how each signal stacks and how to verify placement with real data, not estimates.
Get 95% Inbox Placement with ColdRelay
ColdRelay handles every item on this checklist automatically — SPF, DKIM, DMARC, warmup, dedicated IPs, bounce management, blocklist monitoring, and compliance. You just write the emails.
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