In the ActiveCampaign Email Designer, click either the Gear icon or the Test Email icon, type an address into the Test Your Campaign field, and click Send Test. In the Classic Designer, click the Gear icon above the right sidebar and send from the Settings modal that opens.
The two paths exist because two designers are in service at the same time, and that single fact explains why most ActiveCampaign instructions on the internet do not match the screen in front of you. Before following any guide for this platform, check which designer your account has.
Three prerequisites also stop test sends before they start, and none of them is obvious from the error:
- Your sending domain must be verified before test emails can be sent.
- During the free trial period, test emails can only be sent to the trial user's own email address.
- For non-agency-owned accounts created on or after 29 July 2020, the From email address must be verified first.
Send a test email in ActiveCampaign
Two routes reach the same place. The designer route is faster while you are editing; the summary route is easier to find when the campaign is already built.
From the campaign settings page. In the Email Designer, click the Gear icon or the Test Email icon. In the Classic Designer, click the Gear icon above the right sidebar. Type the address into the Test Your Campaign field, then click Send Test.
From the Campaign Summary page. Click Test and preview, then Send Test Email, enter the address, and click Send.
You can send to up to 5 different email addresses at once, separated by a comma and a space. The campaign's From address can also receive a copy. ActiveCampaign's documentation for this was last updated on 11 May 2026.
Personalization does not survive an ActiveCampaign test send
ActiveCampaign is specific about what a test drops: conditional content, personalization tags, link actions, and any other pieces of information tied to a contact will not render in this type of test.
That is most of what distinguishes a modern campaign from a newsletter. If your email opens with a first name, branches on a purchase history tag, or swaps a call to action based on lifecycle stage, none of that appears in a test send. You are checking the frame, not the picture. A campaign sent to a real contact is the only way to see the resolved version, which matters more here than on platforms where merge tags at least fall back visibly.
Spam Check is real, and ActiveCampaign tells you where it stops
Most sending platforms have no spam scoring at all. ActiveCampaign runs a Spam Check on every campaign and automation email, and displays the results on both the Campaign Summary page and the Campaign Settings page. A clean result shows Passed with a green checkmark. A result with problems shows a numeric score and a list of issues, each corresponding to at least one rule that fired.
The engine is SpamAssassin, which ActiveCampaign describes as the most widely used open-source tool for scanning messages for spamminess. That is accurate, and so is the caveat the same help article attaches to it. ActiveCampaign states that major ISPs do not rely heavily on SpamAssassin when identifying spam, naming Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, and that many do not use SpamAssassin at all. It adds that a low score does not guarantee inbox placement, just as a high score does not necessarily mean your email is spam.
It is rare for a vendor to disclaim its own feature that plainly, and the disclaimer is correct. SpamAssassin scoring is a useful hygiene check on content: it catches malformed HTML, heavily weighted phrases, and structural problems worth fixing regardless. Across messages tested with Unspam this year, 88% land in the safe SpamAssassin range, which tells you how rarely content alone is the reason a campaign fails. For the mechanics of what the score is actually counting, SpamAssassin scoring goes through it rule by rule.
Client previews, and the share link nobody uses
In the Email Designer, click the Test Email icon above the right sidebar, to the left of the gear icon, then click View compatibility. A modal opens where you can click between the available email clients. In the Classic Designer, the same feature lives under the Gear icon as Email Client Preview.
The Share This link on the left pane of that modal generates a URL you can send to anyone. It is the cheapest way to get design sign-off, because a reviewer sees every client rendering without you spending a test send or adding them to a list. Almost nobody uses it.
Preview allowances depend on the plan tier, so check what your account includes before building a review process around it.
What a test send still cannot tell you
Every check above evaluates the message. None of them evaluates the send. The questions left open after a clean Spam Check and a good rendering pass are all about identity and reputation: whether your DKIM signature aligns to your own domain, whether your tracking links resolve through a domain with clean history, and where the message actually lands at each provider.
Placement is measured rather than scored. Of the campaigns run through Unspam so far this year, 65% of emails reach the primary inbox, and the Unspam deliverability benchmark shows how that varies by provider.
When you need a real campaign send instead
The honest test is a real send to a seed address, through your normal sending path, with personalization resolving and links live.
The ActiveCampaign deliverability guide covers that setup end to end. For the placement half, an inbox placement test sends the campaign to seed mailboxes at Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and five other providers and reports where each copy was filed.
When the campaign is ready, run it through the free Unspam spam test as a real send rather than a test send, so the authentication and the links you are checking are the ones your subscribers will get.
