Sending a test email and checking the inbox

The only test that counts is a real message landing in a real inbox. A successful connection only says that your application reaches our relay; whether the recipient also puts the message in the inbox you only see by looking. Here is how to do that properly, in a quarter of an hour.

Step 1: choose test addresses

Use at least two addresses outside your own domain, at different large mail providers. Your own domain is not a good test: your own mail server trusts you anyway. Do not use a disposable address either; those do not show headers.

Step 2: send the message

Send from the application you connected — your mail program, web shop or CRM — and not from another channel. Use a realistic subject and realistic content, with at least a few sentences of text and a link to your website. A message that only says "test" is already considered suspicious by some filters.

Step 3: look at the delivery log

Open the delivery log of your sending domain in the 2Mail dashboard. The message should be there within seconds with a positive status from the receiving server. If it is not there, it never reached our relay and the problem is in the connection. If it is there with a rejection, the recipient's reply says what is wrong.

Step 4: check the inbox

Look at each test address in the inbox and in the spam folder. If the message lands in spam, open it and look at the headers — every mail program has an option like "show original" or "view source". Find the line with the authentication results. It should say: spf=pass, dkim=pass and dmarc=pass. A fail on any of the three is almost always the cause of the spam folder.

Step 5: review the message itself

• Are the sender name and address correct, and is it an address on your sending domain?
• Do the links work, and do they point at your own domain?
• Is there a text version next to the HTML version? A message with only images scores badly.
• For campaigns, is there an unsubscribe link and your company address?

If the message is in the spam folder

1. Fix authentication first: SPF and DKIM.
2. Mark the message as "not spam" at the test address and send again. That only helps for that one address, but it confirms whether the content is the problem.
3. Avoid capitals in the subject, strings of exclamation marks and shortened links in the test message.

More about the factors that decide whether you land in the inbox on email deliverability; how the relay itself works on how an SMTP relay works.

Still stuck?

Send us the headers of the message that landed in spam via contact. Everything we need to pinpoint the cause is in there.