15 Best Email Testing Tools for Optimized Delivery in 2025
10 Best Email Testing Tools List
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 15 tools reviewed.
Email testing can be a headache. You want your messages to look perfect across devices and email clients, but glitches can slip through. That's where email testing tools come in.
I've spent time researching and evaluating these tools so you don't have to. In my experience, a reliable email testing tool can save you time and reduce stress. It ensures your emails render correctly and reach your audience without a hitch.
In this article, I'll share my top picks. You'll get an unbiased look at the best options available, tailored to your needs. Whether you're a small team or a large organization, you'll find a tool that fits. Let's dive in and tackle those email challenges together.
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Best Email Testing Tools Summary
This comparison chart summarizes pricing details for my top email testing tool selections to help you find the best one for your budget and business needs.
| Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Best for dynamic DMARC validation | Not available | From $14/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
| 2 | Best for creating & testing email templates | Free version available | From $12.50/month | Website | |
| 3 | Best for email testing in staging environments | A free version specifically for a single inbox and up to 500 email tests per month. | From $14.99/ month for 1 user and up to 5 inboxes | Website | |
| 4 | Best for testing workflows that span web and email | 14-day free trial | From $212/month | Website | |
| 5 | Best for testing email accessibility | 7-day free trial + free demo available | From $74/month | Website | |
| 6 | Best for spam testing email campaigns | A free version specifically for personal use. | From $59/month for the basic plan | Website | |
| 7 | Best for integrations | 7-day free trial | From $79/month for the basic package | Website | |
| 8 | Best for email + web monitoring | Free Trial | $39/month for 10 test targets at 1-min frequency | Website | |
| 9 | Best free email testing tool | Not available | Free to use | Website | |
| 10 | Best for marketing automations | Not available | From $14.99/month; then, add $20/block (AKA 25,000 emails) | Website |
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Docker
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Pulumi
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Best Email Testing Tool Reviews
Below are my detailed summaries of the best email testing tools that made it onto my shortlist. My reviews offer a detailed look at the key features, pros & cons, integrations, and ideal use cases of each tool to help you find the best one for you.
Investigate is a free DMARC checker developed by Red Sift that helps organizations verify whether their email authentication protocols are configured correctly. Unlike simple DNS lookups, Investigate performs dynamic checks by requiring you to send a test email. This approach ensures that the tool evaluates your actual sending infrastructure—whether you use Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, or another provider—rather than relying on static records alone.
Investigate offers comprehensive coverage by testing multiple authentication and security protocols, including SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, TLS, FCrDNS, and MTA-STS. If it detects misconfigurations or weaknesses, the tool provides clear, actionable guidance to help teams fix the issues quickly. This ensures stronger protection against phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks while supporting compliance with Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo’s bulk sender requirements.
Investigate provides valuable features for email security readiness, such as verifying DKIM/SPF alignment, checking if TLS is enabled for secure delivery, and validating DKIM keys. It also functions as a “security scorecard,” giving organizations a clear view of their domain’s trust posture and helping them achieve full DMARC enforcement faster.
Stripo is an email design platform that allows teams to design responsive emails with little or no HTML skills required. It is equipped with a comprehensive drag-n-drop editor and a set of basic blocks that allow users to create real-time content with no coding skills. Stripo was one of the first email builders to implement AMP for Email technology.
Stripo allows you to reuse and save email modules, even across different email campaigns. It comes with automated processes, custom modules libraries, and provides a host of personalization like the ability to embed custom HTML code to create interactive elements.It provides users with over 1000 free and ready-to-use responsive email templates that are also mobile optimized.
Stripo comes with over 100,000 stock images along with the opportunity to personalize and export emails, then track conversions thereafter.Stripo can be integrated with over 60 ESPs/CRMs tools. This provides users with versatility and flexibility of functionality, for instance, to push emails to automation systems with only a click of a button.
MailTrap is an online tool for safe email testing in development and staging environments. The tool is used as a fake SMTP server to catch test emails, view them in virtual inboxes, and debug before they are sent to real users. MailTrap allows you to test and iterate over new emails efficiently in order to avoid emails mistakenly being sent to clients and other employees from dev environments. MailTrap can be integrated via API or as an SMTP server.
MailTrap offers numerous features, including Bcc testing. Most email testing tools do not support Bcc as it is not a regular SMTP header like To or Cc. MailTrap displays all Bcc’ed addresses and is able to verify whether they stay invisible for the main recipients. MailTrap also provides a customizable email address for each inbox, allowing you to run tests in a production environment in addition to a development environment.
Reflect is an AI-powered automated regression testing platform that boosts test coverage without impeding development, enabling effortless creation of comprehensive end-to-end tests without the need for manual code writing. They have email testing as an add-on to their mid-tier plan or you can sign up for the enterprise edition to for a feature-all-inclusive approach. Reflect also supports cross-browser testing—running tests on the most popular modern browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. They also regularly update their infrastructure as new browser versions are released.
You can uncover bugs that often go unnoticed using their advanced visual testing capabilities. Unlike typical website automation software that operates below the user interaction level, Reflect comes equipped with first-class visual testing support. Detect and resolve visual regressions, such as UI bugs that don't impact email functionality, before they reach your end users. You can easily set up and run tests with Reflect's built-in scheduler. Create a test structure once and then relaunch it and record results at-will. Reflect also seamlessly integrates with any on-prem or cloud-hosted CI/CD platform, including popular ones like Jenkins and CircleCI.
Email on Acid is an email platform that specializes in quality assurance and pre-deployment functionality. It enhances organizations’ ability to deliver error-free emails that maintain brand reputation to ultimately boost marketing ROI.
Email on Acid strives to provide consistency in visual email rendering across different devices and platforms, ensuring generated emails get displayed as intended. It streamlines the email testing and pre-deployment process with campaign prechecks, URL validation, image optimization, and so on.
Email on Acid allows you to run checklists that matter like UTM validation and ADA compliance.Email on Acid improves email deliverability rates with spam checks in addition to providing access to blacklisted domains. This allows developers and email designers to verify their email list against up to over 20 popular spam filters while also testing IP addresses against popular block list services.
Email on Acid comes with an editor for building templates along with team collaboration tools for better efficiency.
GlockApps is an inbox delivery and spam filter testing tool that allows users to fix any email deliverability problems prior to hitting send. GlockApps provides a one-stop-shop for all email delivery tools including a “Reputation Check,” which allows you to audit your IP address and domain you are sending from against industry blacklists. You also have access to DMARC Email Analytics to monitor, capture, separate and or/reject any email pretending to be you.
Glockapps provides detailed spam and blacklist reports in order to allow the user to troubleshoot and fix problems that improve email deliverability. This feature is particularly useful should you wish to test marketing campaigns and deliverability of email marketing providers. The report shows all IP addresses that were used to send emails and details whether they are on any blacklists, allowing you to get an overall view of the email campaign’s performance.
Litmus ESP is an email marketing tool that helps you build, test, and analyze all email service providers (ESPs). Litmus allows you to chart the specific reasons why an email may fail to deliver, as well as allow you to see the time taken to load an image and have accessibility to real world processing into inboxes.
Litmus’s user interface provides fast loading screenshots of all current email clients, organization of emails within one folder system, preview testing of email content and a Builder for checking and testing various code against different email clients, allowing you to streamline your processes. The user interface also allows for team commenting and editor functionality.
Litmus connects with a wide range of ESPs and other services, including Acoustic Campaign, Adobe Campaign Standard, Adobe Marketo, Hubspot, Oracle Eloqua, Oracle Responsys, Pardot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and SAP Marketing Cloud.
Wormly is a website uptime monitoring solution that tracks things like site uptime, CPU usage, and SMTP server testing for new mail servers. You can access SMTP testing and Remote Ping testing for free through their site by adding a few details into an on-page form. Wormly provides detailed website and app uptime reporting and runs on all major operating systems including Windows and Linux.
In addition to email testing, Wormly offers a website monitoring service which continually monitors your website infrastructure and will alert you if a failure is detected, allowing you to act quickly and minimize downtime. The tool also offers sensors to monitor TCP/IP services to their full extent which allows you to get a picture of your infrastructure availability and uptime.
MailCatcher is an email testing tool that is designed to intercept all mail from any web or mobile app and store it for display. MailCatcher runs a fake SMTP server and shows HTML and CSS emails, Plain Text emails and Source versions of messages as applicable. It also rewrites HTML enabling display of embedded images and can open links in a new window. This allows you to effectively test all aspects of your email and check the formatting before it goes to your client.
MailCatcher mail appears instantly if WebSockets is supported on your browser, otherwise it updates every thirty seconds. It also offers command line options to override the default SMTP/HTTP IP and port settings, which allows you to manipulate your testing the best way for your practice.
Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform with a robust content creation suite, marketing analytics, and add-on options for advanced email testing features. Mailchimp is AI-powered and provides user-friendly tools on an intuitive user interface, offering accessibility to users who lack deep technical knowledge. Mailchimp offers comprehensive reporting for deliverability, open rates, click-throughs, and conversions.
Mailchimp provides marketing automation features so you can manage transactional deliveries and automate tasks and communications. The tool is scalable, allowing you to send a large quantity of emails at once. Mailchimp also offers website hosting and design, making it easy for the user to create landing pages from a variety of basic templates (or code your own from scratch).
Other Email Testing Tools
Here are some additional email testing tools options that didn’t make it onto my shortlist, but are still worth checking out:
- MailTester
For ease-of-use email testing
- MailSlurp
For end-to-end email testing
- MailHog
For app developers
- ZeroBounce
Email validation service that uses AI-powered deliverability scoring to increase your deliverability and open rates.
- SparkPost
Email sender reputation tool using data-driven analytics to parse bounce, delivery, and engagement events.
Email Testing Tool Selection Criteria
When selecting the best email testing tools to include in this list, I considered common buyer needs and pain points like ensuring cross-platform compatibility and accurate email rendering. I also used the following framework to keep my evaluation structured and fair:
Core Functionality (25% of total score)
To be considered for inclusion in this list, each solution had to fulfill these common use cases:
- Test email rendering across devices
- Validate email links and images
- Check spam filter compliance
- Preview email in various clients
- Analyze email load time
Additional Standout Features (25% of total score)
To help further narrow down the competition, I also looked for unique features, such as:
- Automated testing workflows
- Real-time collaboration tools
- AI-driven content analysis
- Customizable test scenarios
- Advanced analytics reporting
Usability (10% of total score)
To get a sense of the usability of each system, I considered the following:
- Intuitive user interface
- Simple navigation structure
- Customizable dashboard options
- Quick access to key features
- Responsive design for mobile
Onboarding (10% of total score)
To evaluate the onboarding experience for each platform, I considered the following:
- Availability of training videos
- Interactive product tours
- Access to templates and guides
- Responsive chatbots for support
- Regular webinars for new users
Customer Support (10% of total score)
To assess each software provider’s customer support services, I considered the following:
- 24/7 support availability
- Multiple support channels
- Fast response times
- Detailed knowledge base
- Personalized assistance options
Value For Money (10% of total score)
To evaluate the value for money of each platform, I considered the following:
- Competitive pricing tiers
- Transparent pricing structure
- Free trial availability
- Discounts for long-term use
- Comprehensive feature set for price
Customer Reviews (10% of total score)
To get a sense of overall customer satisfaction, I considered the following when reading customer reviews:
- Positive feedback on reliability
- User satisfaction with features
- Ease of integration feedback
- Comments on customer service
- Overall value perception by users
How to Choose Email Testing Tool
It’s easy to get bogged down in long feature lists and complex pricing structures. To help you stay focused as you work through your unique software selection process, here’s a checklist of factors to keep in mind:
| Factor | What to Consider |
|---|---|
| Scalability | Will the tool grow with your team? Consider if it can handle more emails as your business expands without extra costs or slowdowns. |
| Integrations | Does it connect with your current tech stack? Check if it works with your existing CRM, marketing tools, or any other software you rely on. |
| Customizability | Can you tailor it to fit your specific needs? Look for flexibility in setting up tests and adjusting parameters to match your workflows. |
| Ease of use | Is it user-friendly? Ensure team members can easily navigate the interface without extensive training. Look for a clean layout and intuitive design. |
| Implementation and onboarding | How quickly can you get started? Evaluate the setup time and availability of resources like tutorials or support to help your team get up to speed. |
| Cost | Does it fit your budget? Compare pricing plans and features offered. Look out for hidden fees or charges for additional users or features. |
| Security safeguards | How does it protect your data? Ensure the tool complies with data protection standards and offers encryption or other security measures. |
What Are Email Testing Tools?
Email testing tools are software solutions designed to help users test and preview email campaigns before sending them. Marketing teams, designers, and developers generally use these tools to ensure emails look right across devices and clients. Features like cross-platform testing, spam filter checks, and rendering previews help with accuracy and consistency. Overall, these tools ensure your emails reach and engage your audience effectively.
Features
When selecting email testing tools, keep an eye out for the following key features:
- Cross-platform testing: Ensures emails render correctly on different devices and email clients, providing a consistent user experience.
- Spam filter checks: Helps identify potential issues that might cause emails to be flagged as spam, improving deliverability rates.
- Rendering previews: Allows users to preview how emails will appear in various email clients, ensuring visual accuracy.
- Link and image validation: Verifies that all links and images are functioning and displayed correctly before sending.
- Customizable test scenarios: Enables users to tailor tests to specific needs, enhancing flexibility and relevance.
- Automated testing workflows: Streamlines the testing process by automating repetitive tasks, saving time and reducing errors.
- Real-time collaboration tools: Facilitates teamwork by allowing multiple users to work on email tests simultaneously.
- AI-driven content analysis: Provides insights into email content effectiveness, helping optimize messaging for better engagement.
- Advanced analytics reporting: Offers detailed reports on email performance, aiding in data-driven decision-making.
- Security safeguards: Ensures data protection through encryption and compliance with data protection standards.
Benefits
Implementing email testing tools provides several benefits for your team and your business. Here are a few you can look forward to:
- Consistent appearance: Ensures emails look the same across all devices and clients, thanks to cross-platform testing.
- Improved deliverability: Reduces the risk of emails landing in spam folders by utilizing spam filter checks.
- Time savings: Automates repetitive tasks, allowing your team to focus on more strategic activities.
- Error reduction: Validates links and images to prevent broken elements in your emails.
- Data-driven insights: Provides analytics that help you make informed decisions about your email campaigns.
- Enhanced collaboration: Real-time collaboration tools facilitate teamwork and improve workflow efficiency.
- Data protection: Security safeguards ensure your email data is handled safely and complies with regulations.
Costs & Pricing
Selecting email testing tools requires an understanding of the various pricing models and plans available. Costs vary based on features, team size, add-ons, and more. The table below summarizes common plans, their average prices, and typical features included in email testing tools solutions:
Plan Comparison Table for Email Testing Tools
| Plan Type | Average Price | Common Features |
|---|---|---|
| Free Plan | $0 | Basic email previews, limited testing volume, and basic analytics. |
| Personal Plan | $10-$30/user/month | Cross-platform testing, link validation, and basic spam filter checks. |
| Business Plan | $50-$100/user/month | Advanced analytics, automated workflows, and real-time collaboration tools. |
| Enterprise Plan | $150-$300/user/month | Customizable test scenarios, dedicated support, and enhanced security features. |
Email Testing Tools FAQs
Here are some answers to common questions about email testing tools:
What are email testing tools used for?
Email testing tools are used to preview and test email campaigns before sending them out. They help ensure emails look right across different devices and clients, check for broken links or images, and evaluate deliverability. This helps your team avoid errors that could impact your email marketing success.
How do email testing tools improve deliverability?
Email testing tools help you address a number of the challenges listed above, in turn improving your email deliverability. Here are a few ways these tools address deliverability issues:
- Spam filters: These tools emulate various spam filters from popular email service providers, and some even serve up a spam score with actionable tips to bring it down.
- Email previews: Avoid visual glitches in your emails by seeing how your designs look across multiple email clients, operating systems, and devices.
- Link validators: Many tools will check for broken links, ensuring the user’s path is clear.
- Load time analyzer: These tools can gauge email size and loading speed, helping you trim the fat as needed.
- Authentication checks: SPF, DKIM, DMARC – the trio of email legitimacy. Tools validate these, ensuring your emails are seen as friends, not foes.
- A/B testing: Many tools support email subject line testing and segmentation of email delivery time, among other A/B tests.
All of these features and functions of email testing tools help you improve deliverability, open rates, and conversions. They can even help you grow your subscriber list and activate inactive subscribers.
How do I measure the ROI of using an email testing tool?
Before you invest in a new tool (or convince your boss to invest in one), it’s important to figure out your goals for how you’ll use it, and how you’ll measure success. In 6 months time, you’ll want to be able to show that there’s been a return on the investment.
The good news is that most of these tools provide email analytics and reporting features to help you measure and track key email metrics. Here are a few ideas of how to measure the ROI of your email testing tool:
- Deliverability rate increase: Measure your email deliverability before and after tool implementation. Improved deliverability directly links to potential revenue upticks.
- Email engagement metrics: Observe changes in open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates post-testing. Positive shifts? The tool’s doing its job.
- Bounce rate reduction: A declined email bounce rate post-tool adoption indicates better email list health and targeting. This translates to saved costs and increased opportunities.
- Time saved: Manual testing can be gruelling. Calculate work hours saved post- versus pre-tool days and quantify that in monetary terms.
- Error costs avoided: Track the number of errors tools catch before going live. Estimate potential brand damage, lost sales, or customer service time for each error and sum it up.
- A/B testing results: If tools help in A/B testing, calculate the difference between the two versions in monetary terms.
Finally, be sure to measure the other side of the equation. Deduct the tool’s cost from the gained value (from the points above) to get a clearer ROI picture.
What’s Next:
If you're in the process of researching email testing tools, connect with a SoftwareSelect advisor for free recommendations.
You fill out a form and have a quick chat where they get into the specifics of your needs. Then you'll get a shortlist of software to review. They'll even support you through the entire buying process, including price negotiations.