Will Your Email Hit the Inbox?

The most common spam trigger categories: (1) Urgency pressure — 'act now,' 'limited time,' 'expires today,' 'last chance.' (2) Free/money promises — 'free,' '100% free,' 'no cost,' 'save big,' 'cash bonus.' (3) Deceptive claims — 'guaranteed,' 'no risk,' 'no obligation,' 'you've been selected.' (4) ALL CAPS words or excessive exclamation marks. (5) Phishing signals — 'verify your account,' 'confirm your identity,' 'click here immediately.' Each trigger carries a different weight — 'FREE!!!' in a subject line is much worse than 'free shipping' in the body.

Modern spam filters use three layers: (1) Content analysis — scanning for trigger words, suspicious formatting (ALL CAPS, excessive punctuation, colored text), and deceptive patterns. (2) Sender reputation — your domain's authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), sending history, and complaint rates. (3) Engagement signals — Gmail and Outlook track whether recipients open, click, or mark your emails as spam. Content is the only layer you can fix before sending — which is what this tool analyzes.

That depends on three factors: your content (what this tool checks), your sender reputation (built over months of sending), and your ESP's deliverability infrastructure. A spam score of 0-3 out of 10 means your content is clean — deliverability depends on the other two factors. A score of 4-6 means your content has fixable issues that will hurt inbox placement. A score of 7+ means your content alone could trigger spam filters regardless of reputation.

Yes, significantly. Each ESP has different deliverability track records: ActiveCampaign scores 94.2% on EmailToolTester (best in class), MailerLite scores 89.8%, Mailchimp scores 89.5%, while Brevo swings between 67.7% and 96.3% across testing rounds. The same email content can land in the inbox on one platform and spam on another. Our ESP-specific predictions use real deliverability data to show how your email would perform on each platform.

There's no fixed threshold — it depends on trigger severity and context. One 'free' in a body paragraph about free shipping is fine. Three urgency triggers ('act now,' 'limited time,' 'don't miss out') in a subject line will almost certainly trigger filters. Our scoring weights each trigger by severity and position (subject line triggers are 3x more impactful than body triggers) to give you an accurate risk assessment.

One or two relevant emojis are fine — they can actually improve open rates by 15-25% in some industries. But 3+ emojis, especially combined with urgency words or ALL CAPS, increase spam risk. The worst combination: '🔥🔥🔥 FREE OFFER — ACT NOW!!!' The safe approach: one emoji that relates to the content, placed at the beginning or end of the subject line.

Gmail uses the strictest spam filtering of any provider. Common Gmail-specific triggers: (1) Low engagement — if less than ~20% of recipients open your emails, Gmail starts routing to spam. (2) Missing authentication — SPF, DKIM, and DMARC must all pass. (3) Spam complaint rate above 0.1% (Gmail's threshold is lower than most providers). (4) Image-heavy emails with little text. (5) Too many links relative to text content. Fix the content issues this tool flags, then focus on engagement and authentication.

On our 0-10 scale: 0-2 is excellent (clean content, no issues), 3-4 is good (minor tweaks recommended), 5-6 is risky (specific issues that will hurt deliverability), 7-8 is poor (multiple spam triggers, inbox placement unlikely), 9-10 is critical (your email looks like spam to every filter). Most well-written marketing emails score 2-4. If you're scoring above 5, the rewrite suggestions will show you exactly what to fix.

Yes. Red or colored text, large font sizes, images without alt text, and broken HTML all increase spam risk. The safest approach: use your ESP's template editor (which generates clean HTML), keep images to under 40% of total email area, always include alt text, and avoid inline CSS tricks like hidden text or zero-height dividers. Plain text emails have the lowest spam risk but also the lowest engagement — a clean HTML template is the optimal middle ground.

Three differences: (1) We show ESP-specific predictions — not just 'you might go to spam' but 'on Mailchimp this scores 6/10, on ActiveCampaign this scores 8/10' using real deliverability data. (2) Word-by-word analysis highlights exactly which words trigger which rules, with severity ratings. (3) We give you rewrite suggestions — not just 'remove spam words' but specific alternative phrasing that keeps your message intact while reducing spam risk.