How to Tell if Your Inboxes Are Burned or if Something Else Broke
Burned inbox and broken setup look almost identical on the surface. The fix is completely different. Here's how to tell which one you're dealing with.
Deliverability drops almost always get blamed on burned inboxes. But a large percentage of the time, the real culprit is something technical — a broken DNS record, a misconfigured tracking domain, or a sending limit that got hit. Getting this diagnosis right saves you from replacing infrastructure you didn't need to replace.
The key distinction
A burned inbox means the sending account or domain has accumulated enough negative reputation signals that providers are actively filtering its mail. A broken setup means something in the technical configuration stopped working — authentication failed, a record disappeared, or a new setting broke something that was previously fine.
Both cause the same symptom: emails landing in spam or not being delivered. But the fix is completely different.
Signals that point to a broken setup
- Deliverability dropped suddenly overnight with no change in sending behavior
- The issue affects all inboxes on a domain simultaneously (not gradually)
- You recently changed nameservers, renewed your domain, or updated DNS
- Authentication checks show a failure or mismatch
- Your ESP recently updated their DKIM selectors
- You moved to a new sending tool and didn't reconfigure tracking
Signals that point to a burned inbox
- Gradual decline over 2–4 weeks, not a sudden drop
- High bounce rates in recent campaigns
- Spam complaints from recipients
- Listed on a major RBL like Spamhaus or Barracuda
- Domain has been sending aggressively for months without rotation
- Open rates collapsed even for warm prospects who previously engaged
The diagnostic process
Step 1: Check authentication
Go to your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records right now. If any are missing or malformed, that's your culprit. This takes two minutes and should always be the first check.
Step 2: Check the blacklists
Run your domain and sending IP through the blacklist checker. A listing on Spamhaus ZEN or DBL is a clear sign of reputation damage, not just a technical glitch.
Step 3: Check your tracking domain
Use the tracking domain checker. If your tracking domain is proxied through Cloudflare (orange cloud), pointing nowhere, or has SSL issues, this could explain spam placement without any inbox being actually burned.
Step 4: Run a placement test
Send an actual test through your normal sending setup. The inbox placement test will show you exactly where the email lands and include the authentication results from the receiving server.
Step 5: Check the redirect
If your domain doesn't redirect properly, some spam filters flag it. Run the redirect checker on your sending domain.
Reading the results
If auth checks pass, blacklists are clean, and the placement test shows spam — you're dealing with reputation damage. The inbox is burned or at risk.
If auth checks fail or show errors — fix those first. Many operators have replaced perfectly good domains because they didn't check that DKIM had silently broken.
When to replace
If you confirm it's reputation damage (not a setup issue), and the domain has been in active use for more than 3 months with a history of spam complaints or blacklistings — replacing is usually faster than repairing. Run the repair-or-replace calculator to get a recommendation based on your specific situation.
Run the checks first
Before replacing anything, run a free inbox placement test. You might find the issue is DNS, not the domain — and save yourself a week of unnecessary work.