Unspam
Cheap spam scoring, placement tests, and rendering previews in one credit pool
Unspam is an email testing platform that scores a message against spam filters, runs inbox placement tests across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other providers, renders the same message across fifty-plus real clients and devices in light and dark mode, and produces attention heatmaps; it is a placement and content testing tool and does not warm mailboxes or monitor DMARC reports.
Overview
Unspam sits in the second job of this category: placement and spam testing. It answers the question of where a specific message lands and why, at the moment you ask it, rather than building reputation over time or watching authentication across a domain. You send a test copy to an address it provides, and it reports back a spam score with the reasons behind it, the placement result per provider, and a set of rendering previews showing how the message actually looks to a recipient.
The bundling is what makes it unusual. Most placement testers stop at inbox, promotions, or spam. Unspam pairs the deliverability result with design testing across more than fifty real clients and devices, each rendered in both light and dark mode, and adds heatmaps predicting where attention will fall. For a small marketing team, that collapses two subscriptions into one, because the alternative is a placement tool plus a rendering tool such as Litmus or Email on Acid at several times the combined price.
The pricing is aggressive to the point of being the main argument. Free covers ten spam tests, three inbox placement tests, ten previews, three device previews, and ten heatmaps a month with no credit card. Basic at $9 a month covers fifty spam tests and ten placement tests, Business at $19 covers two hundred and fifty, and Agency at $29 covers five hundred and two hundred and fifty. Compared with dedicated placement platforms charging in the hundreds, this is close to free, and the free tier is genuinely enough for a solo sender running one campaign a week.
The caveat that every buyer of a placement tester should internalize applies fully here. Seed testing measures where a copy of your message landed in a panel of test inboxes. It does not measure where your actual recipients received it, because filtering is personalized: engagement history between you and a specific recipient influences placement in ways a seed inbox with no history cannot reproduce. A good result is evidence that nothing is structurally wrong; it is not proof that your list is receiving your mail.
Best for
Small marketing teams, agencies, and solo senders who need pre-send spam scoring, provider-by-provider placement evidence, and cross-client rendering checks in one cheap subscription rather than paying separately for a deliverability tool and a rendering tool.
Not the right fit for
- Anyone who needs sender reputation built rather than measured; Unspam tells you a message looks filterable and does nothing to improve the underlying reputation, which is a warming tool's job.
- Teams that need DMARC aggregate report monitoring; Unspam checks authentication on a per-message basis but does not ingest DMARC reports or track who is sending as your domain.
- Buyers who expect seed results to predict what their actual list experiences; personalized filtering means a clean seed test and a spam-foldered campaign can coexist.
- Cold outbound teams running dozens of mailboxes; the credit model suits campaign senders testing a message, not operators monitoring many sending identities continuously.
- Enterprises needing SSO, audit trails, or contractual data guarantees; the platform is priced and built for small teams, and the top tier is a white-label arrangement rather than an enterprise plan.
How it works
- 1
For a spam test, you send your campaign to an address Unspam generates. It analyzes authentication results, content and HTML structure, link and domain reputation, and blacklist presence, returning a score with itemized reasons rather than a bare number.
- 2
For an inbox placement test, you send the same message to a seed list covering Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other providers. Unspam checks each seed inbox and reports where the copy landed, inbox, a tab such as promotions, or spam, broken out by provider so you can see whether a problem is universal or specific to one mailbox provider.
- 3
For rendering, the same message is displayed across more than fifty real clients and devices including Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, iPhone, and Android, each in light and dark mode, which is where most template problems surface. Dark mode in particular breaks logos and background colours in ways nobody catches by eye.
- 4
Heatmaps predict where a reader's attention will land in the layout, which is a design input rather than a deliverability one. All four test types draw on the same monthly credit allowance, so a plan is chosen by total testing volume rather than by feature.
Feature breakdown
20 features in 4 modulesSpam and content testing
The pre-send check: why a message might be filtered, itemized.- Spam score with reasons
- Returns a score alongside the specific factors behind it rather than an opaque number, so a fix is actionable instead of guesswork.
- Authentication checking
- Verifies SPF, DKIM, and DMARC results for the tested message. Note that this is a per-message check, not domain-wide DMARC report monitoring.
- Blacklist checking
- Checks whether the sending domain or IP appears on blocklists, which is one of the few structural causes of filtering that a sender can act on immediately.
- HTML and content analysis
- Flags HTML structure problems, risky content patterns, and link issues that push filter scores upward.
- Unlimited sender accounts
- Testing is not tied to a fixed number of sending addresses even on the free tier, so an agency can test from many client domains without buying seats.
- AI assistant
- An in-product assistant that explains findings and suggests copy changes, included on the free tier.
Inbox placement testing
Where a copy of the message actually landed, provider by provider.- Provider-level placement results
- Reports inbox, tab, or spam placement across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other providers, so you can tell a universal problem from a Microsoft-specific one.
- Seed list testing
- Send to a provided seed list from your own sending platform, which means the test reflects your real sending infrastructure rather than a simulated send.
- On-demand testing cadence
- Tests run whenever you send to the seed list rather than on a fixed schedule, so you control the cadence, limited only by your monthly credit allowance.
- Tab placement detection
- Distinguishes the promotions and updates tabs from the primary inbox at Gmail, which is the difference most marketers actually care about.
- Re-testing after fixes
- The workflow assumes iteration: test, fix authentication or content, test again, which is why credit volume rather than feature access is the pricing axis.
Rendering and design testing
The half that makes Unspam cheaper than buying two tools.- Fifty-plus real clients and devices
- Renders the message in Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, iPhone, Android, and others, using real clients rather than approximations.
- Light and dark mode previews
- Every client is rendered in both modes, which catches the invisible-logo and inverted-background failures that dark mode introduces and that nobody notices until a customer complains.
- Device previews
- Separate device-level previews metered independently from client previews, covering the mobile rendering that carries most opens.
- Attention heatmaps
- Predictive heatmaps showing where a reader's eye is likely to travel, which is a design input rather than a deliverability measure.
Plans and workflow
One credit pool, four test types, and a free tier that is genuinely usable.- Usable free tier
- Ten spam tests, three placement tests, ten previews, three device previews, and ten heatmaps a month with no credit card, which covers a solo sender running weekly campaigns.
- Shared monthly allowances
- Each test type has its own monthly quota rather than a single pooled credit, so heavy rendering use does not consume your placement testing budget.
- Agency-scale volume
- The $29 Agency plan includes five hundred spam tests and two hundred and fifty placement tests a month, which is more testing volume than most agencies use.
- White-label option
- A custom-quoted white-label tier for agencies presenting testing under their own brand.
- Self-serve signup
- Free through Business tiers are entirely self-serve; only Agency and white-label arrangements involve contact.
Use cases
4 documentedSolo newsletter operator
The weekly send has started landing in the promotions tab and the writer has no idea whether the cause is content, authentication, or reputation.
The free tier's three monthly placement tests plus spam scoring identify a failing DKIM signature and two risky link domains, both fixed before the next send at no cost.
Small agency running client campaigns
Six clients each need a pre-send check and a rendering pass, and buying a placement tool plus Litmus for each is out of the question.
The $29 Agency plan covers all six clients' testing volume in one subscription, and unlimited sender accounts mean no per-client seat cost.
Ecommerce marketer debugging dark mode
Customers on iPhone report that the logo has disappeared from the header of the last three campaigns.
Dark mode previews across the device set reproduce the failure immediately, the template background is fixed, and the same test confirms the repair before the next send.
Founder investigating a sudden spam-folder problem
Transactional email started going to spam last week and the team does not know whether the cause is the domain, the content, or a blacklist.
A spam test isolates a blocklist entry on the sending IP, which is fixed with the provider, and repeat placement tests confirm recovery across Gmail and Outlook.
Pricing
from $0 (Free), then $9 per month (Basic)Freemium subscription tiered by monthly test allowances across four test types, with unlimited sender accounts on every tier.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 per month |
Genuinely usable for a solo sender running one campaign a week, which is rare in this category. |
| Basic | $9 per month |
|
| Business | $19 per month |
The tier that fits a small in-house marketing team testing several campaigns a week. |
| Agency | $29 per month |
|
| White Label | Custom quoted |
|
Billing notes
- Each test type carries its own monthly quota rather than drawing on one shared credit pool, so heavy rendering use does not eat your placement testing allowance.
- Unlimited sender accounts on every tier, including free, means agencies do not pay per client domain, which is a meaningful structural advantage over per-seat competitors.
- The free tier requires no credit card and is a working plan rather than a trial, so evaluation is genuinely costless.
- At $29, the Agency plan costs less than a single seat on most dedicated rendering platforms while including placement testing as well.
- Quotas reset monthly and do not roll over, so a bursty testing pattern may need a higher tier than the monthly average suggests.
Value assessment: On price, Unspam is not really competing with the dedicated placement platforms; it undercuts them by an order of magnitude and folds in rendering testing that would otherwise be a separate Litmus or Email on Acid subscription. The Business plan at $19 covering two hundred spam tests, fifty placement tests, and two hundred rendering previews is the sort of value that invites suspicion, and the honest answer is that you are getting a competent generalist rather than the deepest instrument in any one dimension. GlockApps has a larger, better-documented seed panel and continuous monitoring; Litmus has more rendering depth. For a small business that needs both jobs done adequately, Unspam is the obvious purchase, and the free tier means the decision costs nothing to test.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Bundles spam scoring, inbox placement testing, and cross-client rendering in one cheap subscription, replacing two separate tools for most small teams.
- A free tier that is genuinely usable, with three placement tests and ten spam tests a month and no credit card required.
- Unlimited sender accounts on every tier including free, so agencies do not pay per client domain.
- Light and dark mode rendering across more than fifty real clients and devices, which catches the failures that dark mode introduces and nobody sees by eye.
- Separate quotas per test type, so heavy design testing does not consume placement testing budget.
- Itemized spam scoring with reasons rather than an opaque number, which makes fixes actionable.
- Agency volume at $29 a month is cheaper than a single seat on most dedicated rendering platforms.
Limitations
- Seed testing measures a panel of test inboxes, not your actual recipients; personalized engagement history means a clean seed result and a spam-foldered campaign can coexist, and this is true of every placement tester, not just this one.
- Seed panel size and provider composition are less thoroughly documented than GlockApps publishes, so it is harder to judge how representative a result is.
- No continuous monitoring; testing is on-demand at the moment you send, so a reputation problem developing between campaigns goes unseen.
- No DMARC aggregate report ingestion, so it cannot tell you who else is sending as your domain or drive you to a p=reject policy.
- No warming or reputation building whatsoever, so a new domain or mailbox needs a separate tool before it can carry volume.
- Monthly quotas do not roll over, which penalizes bursty testing patterns.
- Company ownership, funding, and headcount are not publicly disclosed, which is a consideration for procurement at a larger buyer.
Head-to-head comparisons
6 alternativesUnspam vs MailGenius
from $0 (free spam test), then $23 per month (Beginner)Both are cheap pre-send spam testers. MailGenius leans into AI copy analysis and automatic testing of every outgoing message on its top plan, priced at $23 to $79 a month. Unspam is cheaper, adds cross-client rendering and heatmaps, and has a usable free tier. Take MailGenius if you want continuous automatic testing and copy rewriting; take Unspam if you want placement plus design testing in one cheap subscription.
Full Unspam vs MailGenius comparisonUnspam vs GlockApps
from $59/mo (Essential, billed annually)GlockApps is the more serious placement instrument, with a documented seed panel of seventy-plus addresses, multi-filter scoring, DMARC analytics, and continuous blacklist monitoring. Unspam is a fraction of the price and adds rendering testing GlockApps does not attempt. Choose GlockApps if placement measurement is a core operational discipline; choose Unspam if you need adequate placement evidence plus design QA on a small budget.
Full Unspam vs GlockApps comparisonUnspam vs MailReach
from $25/mailbox/moMailReach both warms mailboxes through a real-inbox network and runs placement tests, so it fixes reputation as well as measuring it. Unspam only measures, and never touches reputation. If your cold outbound mailboxes are landing in spam, MailReach is the tool that can change that; Unspam will only keep telling you it is happening.
Full Unspam vs MailReach comparisonUnspam vs InboxDoctor
from $2 per mailbox per month (B2B Starter)InboxDoctor combines per-mailbox warming from $2 a month with placement test credits sold separately, aimed at cold outbound operators running many sending identities. Unspam is a campaign sender's tool with no warming at all. Outbound teams should take InboxDoctor; marketing teams testing newsletters and transactional templates should take Unspam.
Full Unspam vs InboxDoctor comparisonUnspam vs Folderly
from $96/mailbox/moFolderly is a managed deliverability operation that monitors continuously and does remediation work on your behalf, priced accordingly. Unspam is a self-serve testing tool under $30 a month that tells you what is wrong and leaves the fixing to you. Take Folderly if you want the problem handled by someone else; take Unspam if you have the skills and want cheap evidence before each send.
Full Unspam vs Folderly comparisonUnspam vs MailerCheck
from $10 (1,000 credits, pay as you go)MailerCheck approaches deliverability from the list-quality and inbox-insights side within the MailerLite family, where Unspam is a standalone testing tool covering placement and rendering. If your sending already sits in that ecosystem, MailerCheck is the more integrated option; if you send from anywhere and want cheap cross-provider testing plus design QA, Unspam is the more flexible one.
Full Unspam vs MailerCheck comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Under ten minutes. Create an account, send a test message to the address provided, and read the result. There is no DNS change, no mailbox connection, and no configuration.
- Learning curve
- Low. The spam score is itemized in plain language and the rendering previews are self-explanatory. The one thing a buyer must understand is what a seed test does and does not prove, and that is a conceptual point rather than a product one.
- Onboarding
- Fully self-serve from Free through Business, with no credit card required to start. Agency and white-label arrangements involve contact with the vendor.
- Migration notes
- Nothing to migrate. Placement testing keeps no state you would need to carry between vendors beyond historical test results, and moving to or from another tester is simply a matter of sending your next test somewhere else.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web applicationSeed list testing from any sending platform
- API
- Not published as a headline self-serve capability; the product is oriented around its web console.
- Compliance
- GDPR
- Data residency
- Not published as a customer-selectable option.
- SSO
- Not published on the self-serve tiers.
- Security notes
- Testing involves sending real message content to seed addresses operated by the vendor, so campaign copy and any personalization present in the test send is visible to the platform. Avoid using live customer data in test sends.
Support & resources
- Channels
- In-product AI assistantEmail supportVendor contact for agency and white-label arrangements
- Documentation
- Product documentation covering spam testing, placement testing, and rendering previews, oriented toward marketers rather than engineers.
- Community
- No large official user community.
Company
- Founded
- 2021
- Headquarters
- Not publicly disclosed
- Ownership
- Privately held, independent
- Employees
- Not disclosed
- Funding
- No disclosed outside funding.
Timeline
- 2021Launches as a free spam-score checker, competing with the long-standing free single-test tools by adding itemized reasons rather than a bare score.
- 2022Adds inbox placement testing across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other providers, moving from content scoring into placement measurement.
- 2023Adds rendering previews across more than fifty real clients and devices in light and dark mode, positioning against dedicated rendering platforms at a fraction of their price.
- 2024Adds attention heatmaps and an in-product AI assistant, and the Google and Yahoo bulk sender requirements push a wave of small senders into pre-send testing for the first time.
- 2026Maintains a free tier with real monthly allowances and an agency plan at $29, keeping the platform positioned as the budget option in placement and design testing.
Integrations
- Any sending platform, via seed list addresses
- Gmail and Google Workspace as tested providers
- Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 as tested providers
- Yahoo and other consumer providers as tested providers
- Apple Mail, iPhone, and Android as rendering targets
- Blacklist and reputation data sources for spam scoring
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Unspam?
Unspam is an email testing platform. It scores a message against spam filters with itemized reasons, runs inbox placement tests across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other providers, renders the message across more than fifty real clients and devices in light and dark mode, and produces attention heatmaps. It is used before a send rather than continuously.
Which of the three deliverability jobs does Unspam do?
Placement and spam testing. It does not warm mailboxes and it does not monitor DMARC aggregate reports across your domain. It checks authentication for the specific message you tested, which is not the same as knowing who else is sending as your domain or being able to reach a p=reject policy.
How much does Unspam cost?
Free covers ten spam tests, three inbox placement tests, ten previews, three device previews, and ten heatmaps a month with no credit card. Basic is $9 a month for fifty spam tests and ten placement tests, Business is $19 for two hundred and fifty, and Agency is $29 for five hundred and two hundred and fifty. A white-label tier is quoted custom.
How large is the seed list and which providers does it cover?
Testing covers Gmail, Outlook and Microsoft, Yahoo, and other providers, with more than fifty real clients and devices used on the rendering side. Unspam publishes less detail about seed panel composition than GlockApps does, so it is harder to judge how representative any single result is. Treat placement results as directional evidence across providers rather than a precise measurement.
How often can I run tests?
Whenever you like, up to your monthly allowance. Tests are on-demand rather than scheduled, triggered by sending to the seed list from your own platform. Quotas reset monthly and do not roll over, so bursty testing may need a higher tier than your monthly average suggests.
Does a good seed test mean my real recipients got the email?
No, and this is the single most important caveat in placement testing. A seed inbox has no engagement history with you, while a real recipient does, and mailbox providers personalize filtering heavily on that history. A clean seed result tells you nothing is structurally wrong with authentication, content, or reputation; it does not prove that a specific subscriber saw your message in their inbox.
What does Unspam not do?
It does not warm mailboxes, build sender reputation, or send campaigns. It does not ingest DMARC aggregate reports or help you reach an enforced DMARC policy. It does not monitor continuously between sends. Buyers regularly purchase a placement tester when their actual problem is a cold, unwarmed sending domain, which testing will diagnose and never fix.
How does Unspam compare with buying a rendering tool separately?
That is its main commercial argument. Dedicated rendering platforms such as Litmus and Email on Acid charge considerably more per seat than Unspam's entire Agency plan, and do not include inbox placement testing. Unspam's rendering depth is shallower, but for a small team that needs to catch broken dark mode layouts and check placement, one $19 subscription replaces two.
Can an agency use one account for multiple clients?
Yes. Unlimited sender accounts are included on every tier including free, so testing from many different client domains does not incur per-seat or per-domain charges. The Agency plan at $29 a month exists to supply the testing volume rather than to unlock multi-client use, and a custom white-label tier is available for agencies presenting the tool under their own brand.
Who owns Unspam?
Unspam is an independent, privately held product with no disclosed outside funding, and the vendor publishes little company information. For a low-cost testing tool with no data dependency that matters less than it would for an authentication platform, but it is worth knowing before you build a process around it.
Editorial verdict
Unspam is the cheapest sensible way for a small business to answer two questions at once: is this message likely to be filtered, and does it look right on the devices people will read it on. Bundling placement testing with fifty-plus client renders in light and dark mode undercuts the combination of a deliverability tool and a rendering tool by a wide margin, unlimited sender accounts make it unusually agency-friendly, and the free tier is a real plan rather than a teaser. It is not the deepest instrument in either dimension: GlockApps documents a better seed panel and monitors continuously, and Litmus renders more thoroughly. And like every placement tester, it measures a panel of seed inboxes rather than your actual recipients, so a clean result is reassurance and not proof. Buy it for pre-send QA on a budget. Do not buy it expecting it to fix a reputation problem, because measuring is all it does.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.