How do you check if your emails land in the inbox or spam?

What is an inbox placement test?

It's a dress rehearsal for your campaign. The tool gives you a list of "seed" inboxes it controls across several mailbox providers. You send your email to them the same way you'll send to prospects. The tool then checks each seed and tells you: inbox, spam, or another tab.

Why bother? Because "delivered" doesn't mean "seen." Your sending platform counts an email as delivered the moment the receiving server accepts it, even if it drops straight into spam. A placement test shows you the folder, not just the handshake.

What it isn't: a guarantee. Seeds are test accounts with no history with you, so they can't show how a real prospect's inbox treats you after weeks of opens, replies or spam reports. Use tests to catch problems before launch, and live metrics to judge the campaign after.

How do you run an inbox placement test, step by step?

Seven steps, about fifteen minutes. Do it before every new campaign.

1. Check authentication first. SPF, DKIM and DMARC on every sending domain (DMARC at p=none at minimum). Google requires all three for bulk senders, roughly 5,000+ messages a day to Gmail (Google Email sender guidelines). Most placement tools flag missing records, but fix them before you test.
2. Test the email you'll actually ship: final subject line, body, links and signature. A cleaned-up test copy tells you nothing about the campaign.
3. Route it the way prospects will get it. If the campaign goes out through Instantly from a given inbox, so does the test. Filters judge the whole path, not just the words.
4. Test each sending domain. One bad domain can hide inside a good average. Most tools let you test several inboxes in one run.
5. Don't blast the seed list like a newsletter. GlockApps recommends loading its seeds into a contact list in your sending tool rather than pasting them all into To, CC or BCC, sending to no more than 25 seeds at a time, and leaving 15–20 minutes between tests of the same message.
6. Read the results by provider, not only the overall score (next section).
7. Fix one thing, then retest. Change the domain setup or the copy, not both at once, so you know what worked.

How do you read placement test results?

Look at each provider separately, then act on the worst one. This is our triage guide, not a published benchmark.

Swipe to see more →

Which inbox placement tools are worth it?

Five options, from free to paid. Prices from each vendor's own page, as of September 2026 (MailReach warmup price as of October 1, 2026).

Swipe to see more →

Warmup and placement often come bundled. If you're still choosing a sender, compare warmup too: best email warmup tools. If a test points to a blacklist, see how to check if your domain is blacklisted; for a paid warmup layer with its own seed-list tester, see is Warmy worth it?.

When should you skip each tool?

One skip line per tool, from the table and cost math above (as of September 2026).

• Instantly Inbox Placement: skip it if you don't send from Instantly. Automated recurring tests need Hypergrowth Inbox Placement at $97 a month.
• Smartlead SmartDelivery: skip it if you aren't on Smartlead, or run fewer than about 26 tests a month. At 26 tests the Growth add-on works out to about $1.88 a test.
• MailReach: skip the free tier if you need more than 3 tests per 24 hours.
• GlockApps: skip it if you only want a few tests a month and no DMARC reporting. Essential is $85 a month on monthly billing, about $3.27 a test at 26 tests.
• Google Postmaster Tools: skip it as a placement test. It isn't one, and its data can be missing when daily volume is low.

What does inbox placement testing cost per month?

Our worked example: a team with 12 sending inboxes on 6 domains that launches one new campaign a week and tests every domain before launch. That's about 6 tests a week, roughly 26 a month.

Swipe to see more →

The math: $30 ÷ 50 = $0.60 and $30 ÷ 26 = $1.15; $85 ÷ 30 = $2.83 and $85 ÷ 26 = $3.27; $708 ÷ 360 = $1.97 and $59 ÷ 26 = $2.27; $49 ÷ 120 = $0.41 and $49 ÷ 26 = $1.88; $47 ÷ 26 = $1.81; $97 ÷ 26 = $3.73.

Our take: start on MailReach's free tier. Pay only when you outgrow 3 tests a day, want automated monitoring, or need tests to run inside the tool you already send from. Per test, the cheapest paid option here is Smartlead's add-on if you use all of it, then MailReach credits.

What can't a placement test tell you?

How real people react. Mailbox providers learn from recipients, and seeds don't reply, star or complain. So after launch, watch the numbers that come from real inboxes:

• Spam complaints. Google and Yahoo require a spam rate under 0.3%, and Google's target is under 0.1% (Google Email sender guidelines; Yahoo Sender Hub). Postmaster Tools counts only mail that reached the inbox and was then marked spam.
• Bounces. Our guideline is to pause above 2%; Google and Microsoft publish no bounce threshold. Verify every list first: best email verification tool.
• Replies. The average reply rate on Instantly's platform is 3.43% (Instantly, Cold Email Benchmark Report 2026). Instantly counts every reply, follow-ups included, divided by total emails sent, so the rate is per email, not per prospect. A campaign that passes every placement test but gets almost no replies has a targeting or copy problem, not a deliverability one.
• Volume per inbox. Our guideline is about 30 cold sends per inbox per day; Instantly's help center also recommends 30 campaign emails per account per day. Planner: how many cold emails per day per inbox.

If the test is clean and the numbers still sag, work through the usual causes in order: authentication, list quality, volume per inbox, warmup on new domains, then copy.

How do you pick a placement tool in 60 seconds?

Stop at the first "yes."

1. Sending from Instantly and want recurring checks? → Instantly Inbox Placement (Hypergrowth for automated tests).
2. Running an agency on Smartlead? → SmartDelivery (Growth for up to 120 tests a month).
3. Want DMARC reports in the same tool? → GlockApps.
4. Testing a handful of campaigns a week on no budget? → MailReach free tier.
5. Sending to Gmail addresses at volume? → Add Google Postmaster Tools on top of whichever you picked. It's the only view here that comes from Google itself.