Spam-score check

Contacts & Mailingmailing3 min read

Available on Starter and above

An on-demand pre-send check that scores your subject + HTML body 0–10 for spam-trigger patterns and gives concrete fixes. Pure local heuristics — no third-party API call, no rate limit, runs in milliseconds.

Score is advice, not a gate. It never blocks sending. The point is to surface obvious issues (caps-lock subject, classic spam phrases, missing personalization, third-party URL shorteners) before you commit a 5,000-recipient send.

How to use

Compose your mailing at /mailing/compose.
Click Check spam score above the Send button.
The badge appears next to the button:
- 0–3 — green, no obvious issues
- 4–6 — amber, review the flag list
- 7–10 — red, fix before sending
The flag list below the score names each problem with a concrete fix.
Edit your subject / body, click Check spam score again to re-run.

What it checks

Subject line

Caps-lock ratio — subjects that are mostly uppercase trigger filters.
Exclamation marks — more than two looks pushy.
Classic spam phrases — "FREE", "WIN", "!!!", "AMAZING", "limited time", "act now", etc. (~50 entries.)
Currency markers in the subject — "$", "£", "€" — especially with numbers.
Length — under 30 chars looks like a phishing attempt; over 80 gets truncated by clients.

Body

Caps-lock ratio — body-wide UPPERCASE.
Exclamation density — one per paragraph max.
Spam-trigger phrases — another ~80 entries scoped to body context.
Image-to-text balance — image-only emails (no real text) are classic spam.
Link density — more than ~10 links per 200 words is suspicious.
Third-party URL shorteners — bit.ly, tinyurl, t.co etc. land in spam filters at higher rates than your own short links.
Missing personalization placeholder — {{FirstName}} / {{Email}} / {{Name}} in either subject or body, even unused, signals "this isn't a mass blast".

Worked example — rescue a borderline subject

Original subject: LIMITED TIME!!! GET YOUR FREE 50% OFF NOW

Score: 9 / 10. Flags:

Subject is mostly uppercase
Subject contains 3 spam-trigger phrases ("LIMITED TIME", "FREE", "NOW")
Subject contains 3 exclamation marks
No personalization placeholder anywhere

Rewritten: Hi {{FirstName}}, your 50% spring discount

Re-score: 1 / 10. Same offer, same urgency-by-context ("spring"), but Gmail lands it in Primary instead of Promotions.

What it doesn't check

DNS authentication — SPF / DKIM / DMARC are checked at the Sender domain level, not per-mailing.
Reputation — sender reputation is built over time by receiver feedback; there's no static analysis that can tell you what your IP / domain reputation looks like at Gmail. The throttling and warmup features protect that reputation while you build it.
Per-receiver rules — Gmail and Outlook each have their own opaque filters; this is a baseline check, not a guarantee of inbox placement.

Email Mailing — compose page basics
Sender domain — the structural deliverability lever (verifies SPF + DKIM + DMARC, signs with your reputation)
Deliverability: throttling & warmup