A brand-new domain with no trust
Mailbox providers default to suspicious for a sender they've never seen. Your first welcome and verification emails fight an uphill battle that an established domain never has to.
// for startups
Your first emails have to land. On a brand-new domain with zero reputation.
You just bought the domain, wired up an ESP, and started sending product, onboarding, and early sales email. Receiving servers have never seen you, so they don't trust you yet. Unspam shows you exactly where your signups, magic links, and first outbound land at Gmail, Outlook, and the rest, before a missed welcome email becomes a churned user you never hear from.
The deliverability problems we hear most.
SPF, DKIM, and DMARC you set up once and never checked
Most early teams paste DNS records from an ESP setup wizard and move on. A single misaligned record sends your sign-up confirmations straight to spam, and you have no idea until users say they never got the email.
No deliverability person on the team
There's no email engineer at a five-person startup. You need answers in plain language, not a 40-tab dashboard, and a free plan that fits before there's a budget line for it.
Why teams like yours pick Unspam.
// placement
See where your signups actually land, per provider.
Inbox vs promotions vs spam vs missing across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Zoho, ProtonMail, and AOL. On a fresh domain the gap between providers is huge, and this is the only way to see it before users do.
PLACEMENT · 6 PROVIDERS · 4s 4 / 6 INBOX
G gmail.com inbox · primary
O outlook.com inbox · focused
Y yahoo.com inbox
Z zoho.com inbox
P protonmail.com promotions
A aol.com spam · junk
primary inbox rate 67% · ↑ 4 pts this week
// blocklists
Catch a blocklist hit on your new domain early.
A young domain that lands on Spamhaus or a similar list once can stall reputation for weeks. Checks against dozens of public blocklists for your domain and IP, so you find a listing the day it happens, not after onboarding numbers crater.
CHECKING · 203.0.113.81 · hirely.com
13/14 PASS
Spamhaus ZEN
clean
SpamCop
clean
DroneBL
clean
Barracuda
listed
UCEProtect L1
clean
Invaluement IVMu
clean
SURBL
clean
URIBL Multi
clean
PSBL Truncate
clean
Manitu NIX
clean
Spamhaus DBL
clean
Mailspike Z
clean
Hostkarma
clean
UCEProtect L2
clean
next sweep · alert on listing
in 14h
How it works.
01
Send a real email to Unspam
Add Unspam's seed address to your ESP or app and trigger an actual welcome email, magic link, or sales send. Same path your users hit, no integration to wire up.
02
Get a score in seconds
Spam score, SPF/DKIM/DMARC verdict, HTML and content checks, plus an AI heatmap of what readers look at first. The AI assistant explains every fix in plain language.
03
See placement per provider
Run the inbox-placement test to a seed list and read inbox vs promotions vs spam vs missing across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Zoho, ProtonMail, and AOL.
04
Put it on Autopilot
Schedule re-tests so you get an alert the morning your spam rate climbs. As a young domain warms up, you watch placement improve instead of guessing.
A few common workflows.
The moments early-stage teams reach for Unspam, from the day you send your first real email to the week before a launch. Most startups set up two or three of these and forget about them.
-
First send on a new domain
Before you point your app at the new sending domain, run a free test on a real signup email. Confirm auth passes and you're landing in the inbox, not building a churn problem from day one.
-
Sign-up and email verification
If the confirm-your-email link goes to spam, the account never activates and it never shows up as a problem in your funnel. Test it so your activation rate isn't quietly capped by deliverability.
-
Password reset and magic links
A user who can't reset their password or click a magic link is a silent churn. Test these across consumer Gmail and corporate Google Workspace, where they filter very differently.
-
Founder-led cold outbound
Early sales is the founder emailing prospects from the company domain. One test tells you whether those messages reach the inbox or get filtered before anyone reads the pitch.
-
Before a launch or fundraise
Investor updates, launch announcements, and waitlist blasts go out at once to a list that's never been mailed. Run a placement test first so the most important email you send all quarter actually lands.
-
Watching reputation grow on the free plan
Schedule a recurring test and watch placement climb as your young domain earns trust. Free monthly quota, AI assistant included, no card, exactly what a pre-revenue team can afford.
// FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Straight answers for founders and small teams who send a lot of email and have never thought hard about where it goes.
We just launched on a new domain. Why are our emails going to spam? +
Because mailbox providers have no history with your domain yet, so they treat it as risky by default. The fix is usually two things: get SPF, DKIM, and DMARC fully aligned, then send consistently so reputation builds. Run a free email health check to confirm your records are right, then a placement test to see exactly which providers are filtering you.
Is there a free plan? We're pre-revenue. +
Yes. The free plan comes with a monthly quota of tests, the AI fix assistant, and no credit card required. It's enough for a small team to test their core flows and run scheduled monitoring. See plans when you outgrow it.
Does Unspam connect to our ESP or send mail for us? +
No, and that's by design. Unspam doesn't plug into any ESP's API, doesn't send mail, and isn't an email service or a warmup tool. You add our seed address to your tool and send a real message to it, then read the results. Testing what actually arrives means the verdict is honest no matter which ESP, SMTP, or app you send from.
We set up our DNS records months ago. Do we still need to check them? +
Our magic-link and password-reset emails are critical. How do we know they land? +
Send a real reset or magic-link email to the Unspam seed address and run an inbox-placement test. You'll see placement across consumer Gmail and corporate Google Workspace, which filter differently, so a 60% inbox rate doesn't quietly lock 40% of your users out.
We send through SendGrid. Why is our mail still filtered? +
Shared IP pools and an unauthenticated or default sending domain are the usual culprits on a young account. We wrote a step-by-step fix guide for SendGrid deliverability. Before any list send, run the email verifier to flush invalid addresses that would otherwise hurt your fresh domain's reputation.
// ready when you are
Don't let your first emails train spam filters against you.
Run a free test on a real send today. No card, no ESP integration, just answers in a couple of minutes.