Check your domain and IP reputation across major providers and reputation services. Monitor scores that determine inbox placement.
Leave blank to auto-detect from domain's MX records
Domain reputation is a score that email providers assign to your sending domain based on your email behavior. Think of it like a credit score, but for your domain. A high reputation means Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo trust you and deliver your mail to the inbox. A low reputation means your messages get filtered to spam or blocked entirely.
There are two separate but related systems: domain reputation (tied to your From address and DKIM signature) and IP reputation (tied to the mail server's IP). Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo now weight domain reputation more heavily, since senders can easily switch IPs but can't easily swap domains without starting over.
Google Postmaster Tools
Four-tier scale: Bad, Low, Medium, High. The most transparent reputation dashboard available.
Microsoft SNDS
IP-level reputation data for Outlook, Hotmail, and Live mail.
Yahoo Feedback Loop
Reports spam complaints from Yahoo Mail users back to senders.
Search for a domain reputation check and the results split into two groups answering unrelated questions. A clean result from one says nothing about the other, which is where the conflicting reports come from.
Whether the domain is involved in malware, phishing, or spam links. Spamhaus, Cisco Talos, APIVoid and IPVoid answer this. Security teams use it to decide whether a link is safe to open.
Whether mail from the domain reaches the inbox. Google Postmaster Tools, Microsoft SNDS and this page answer this. Senders use it to work out why campaigns land in spam.
A domain registered last week for outbound sits clean on every threat list, because it has never been used for anything. That same domain still cannot reach an inbox dependably, because Gmail has no sending history to score it against. Both readings are accurate and neither one predicts the other.
This page reports sending reputation. It reads the authentication records, the mail server configuration, and the blacklist status of a domain you send from. If you need the security side, Spamhaus DBL and Cisco Talos are the sources mail filters consult most widely.
Your domain reputation is calculated dynamically from multiple signals:
High bounce rates tell providers you're sending to unverified or purchased lists. Keep bounce rates below 2% or your reputation will take a hit.
When a recipient clicks "Report Spam," that goes directly to your domain's reputation score. Google's threshold is 0.1%, go above that consistently and your reputation drops fast.
Gmail tracks whether people open, reply, move out of spam, or delete without reading. Positive engagement tells the algorithm your mail is wanted.
Sudden spikes are a red flag. If you normally send 100 emails a day and suddenly blast 10,000, providers treat that as suspicious.
Proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC prove you're legitimate. Missing authentication actively damages reputation.
If your domain or IP appears on any major blacklist, that's an immediate reputation hit. Use our Blacklist Checker to scan for listings.
Positive loop: Good reputation leads to inbox placement, which leads to higher engagement, which reinforces good reputation. Your reputation keeps climbing.
Negative loop (death spiral): Bad reputation leads to spam folder, which means near-zero engagement, which confirms bad reputation to the provider. Your reputation drops further. This is why catching problems early is far easier than climbing back from damage.
Fix: Run your list through an email verification service before sending. Remove any address that doesn't pass. Aim for under 2%. If already high, pause, clean the list, and resume with smaller volumes.
Fix: Make it easy to unsubscribe. Review targeting, are you reaching the right people? For cold email, improve personalization so messages feel relevant, not like mass spam.
Fix: Ramp up volume gradually. If you need to increase sending, do it in 20-30% increments over days or weeks, not all at once.
Fix: Move to a dedicated IP if possible. For cold email at scale, dedicated infrastructure is essential, shared IPs are too risky.
Fix: Slow down. Reduce volume to 5-10 emails per day and gradually increase over 2-4 weeks. Focus on sending to people who will engage (open and reply). Positive engagement during warmup is critical.
Tied to your From address and DKIM signature. Follows your domain everywhere regardless of which server you send from. Now the primary factor for inbox placement at Gmail.
Tied to the specific IP address of the mail server. The older system. Still matters at Outlook, which weighs it heavily. Matters for shared infrastructure where one bad actor affects everyone.
For most senders, domain reputation is more important than IP reputation. Gmail has explicitly stated that domain reputation is the primary signal. When they conflict, providers generally default to the worse of the two. For the best deliverability, you need both in good standing. Check your full picture with our Deliverability Checker.
Email reputation and sender reputation are both names for the same underlying pair of scores. Providers score a domain and they score an IP. No third score exists for an individual mailbox.
A domain carries one reputation with each provider, and every mailbox on it inherits that score. If one mailbox on a domain is landing in spam, the rest are in the same position whether or not they have shown it yet. Two things follow. Testing a single mailbox tells you about the whole domain, and a domain that has gone bad is worth replacing outright instead of repairing one mailbox at a time.
That inheritance sets the shape of cold email infrastructure. Sending volume gets spread across many domains at low per-inbox rates. On Google Workspace that runs to 2 inboxes per domain at 15 to 25 cold sends each per day. On Microsoft 365 it runs to 25 inboxes per domain at 5 to 10 sends each.
Consumer Gmail and Google Workspace score senders independently, despite the shared parent company. Workspace filtering assumes a business recipient, while consumer Gmail is tuned against scams and treats unfamiliar senders far more harshly. A domain can hold a good Workspace reputation and still land in spam at gmail.com addresses, and seed-list placement tests will not surface it, because seed networks run business mailboxes. Reply rate from those recipients is the only reading available.
A rating assigned to your domain by email providers based on your sending behavior. Google uses a four-tier system (Bad, Low, Medium, High). Your score directly determines whether your emails reach the inbox, get filtered to spam, or are rejected entirely.
On Google Postmaster Tools, "High" is the goal. "Medium" is acceptable but means some mail may get filtered. As a general rule, aim for bounce rates under 2%, spam complaint rates under 0.1%, proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication, and no blacklist appearances.
For a brand new domain, expect 2-4 weeks of warmup to establish a baseline. Reaching "High" reputation on Google Postmaster typically takes 4-8 weeks of consistent, clean sending. Volume matters, if you send very little, it takes longer because providers have less data.
Yes, but it takes time. Identify the cause (bounces, complaints, missing authentication, blacklists). Fix the issues, reduce volume, and gradually rebuild by sending clean email to engaged recipients. Recovery typically takes 2-6 weeks.
Domain age matters, but not the way most think. A 10-year-old domain that never sent email has no sending reputation, treated the same as brand new. What matters is sending history, not registration date. Older domains with active clean sending history have a deeper buffer.
Cold email puts extra pressure on reputation: higher bounce rates, lower engagement, and higher spam complaint rates. The solution is careful list verification, proper warmup, gradual volume increases, and domain separation, never send cold email from your primary business domain.
Domain reputation follows your domain everywhere. IP reputation is tied to the specific mail server IP. Domain reputation is now the primary factor at Gmail. IP reputation still matters at Outlook. For best deliverability, you need both in good standing.
They describe the same thing. Email reputation and sender reputation are informal names for the scores providers attach to your sending domain and your sending IP. No separate score exists for an individual email address, so improving email reputation means improving domain reputation and IP reputation.
No. Reputation attaches to the domain, and every mailbox on that domain inherits it. If one mailbox is landing in spam, treat the others on the same domain as being in the same state, even when their own results still look fine. This is why a placement test on one mailbox per domain gives you a reasonable read on the whole domain.
No. Threat reputation tools such as Spamhaus, Cisco Talos and APIVoid report whether a domain is involved in malware, phishing or spam links. Sending reputation tools report whether mail from that domain reaches the inbox. A domain registered last week sits clean on every threat list and can still fail to reach an inbox, because it has no sending history for Gmail to score against. This page reports sending reputation.
Consumer Gmail and Google Workspace run separate filtering. Workspace assumes a business recipient, while consumer Gmail is tuned against consumer scams and is harsher on senders it does not recognize. A domain can score well with Workspace recipients and still miss the inbox at gmail.com. Seed-list placement tests will not show this, because seed networks are built from business mailboxes, so reply rate from consumer Gmail recipients is the signal to watch.
Domain reputation is only one piece of the deliverability puzzle. Use our other free tools to get a complete picture:
Verify your SPF record is correctly configured
DMARC CheckerAudit your DMARC policy and authentication handling
Blacklist CheckerScan domain and IP across 100+ blacklists
Deliverability CheckerTest overall email deliverability and sending issues
DNS CheckerVerify DNS records are properly configured for email
MX LookupCheck mail exchange records and confirm routing
At ScaledMail we provision and manage the infrastructure layer end to end. Secondary sending domains kept separate from your main business domain, real Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inboxes, SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured correctly on every domain, IP rotation, and continuous reputation monitoring.
Warmup runs inside your sequencer (Smartlead, Instantly, EmailBison, PlusVibe), where the engagement signals live. If this check surfaced reputation problems you would rather not manage yourself, we build the foundation and keep watching it.
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