For email marketers who have been suffering from email deliverability issues in the recent past, have you considered checking whether your emails are getting blocklisted? This is a common concern that affects email delivery rates and reputation and can potentially damage the performance of your email marketing campaigns.
An effective way to address this issue is by monitoring your emails with the help of powerful blocklist monitoring tools. On detecting blocklisted emails, you can then take appropriate action to whitelist them promptly.
What is Email Blocklist Monitoring?
DNSBL or Domain Name System Blocklists (also known as RBL or Real-time Blackhole Lists) are blocklist databases that maintain the reputation of your domain, IP addresses, and emails. If your domain gets listed on any of these blocklists, you are at a disadvantage. This signifies that your domain has been compromised or detected as fraudulent, which may result in an increased spam rate and overall low deliverability of emails.
There are several hundred email blocklists that are constantly getting updated with new domain addresses. It’s not possible to manually monitor them all, which is why an automatic lookup becomes necessary. Here’s how you can monitor blocklists easily with 5 new tools:
5 Best Blocklist Monitoring Tools in 2024
1. MailTester
Mailtester’s Blocklist Monitoring feature is ideal for domain owners who want instant results. All you need to do is send a test mail to an assigned email address and get back your results within minutes. You can also configure real-time alerts for your emails to troubleshoot issues faster.
Advantages of using Mailtester:
- An extensive toolbox with several email verification tools
- Options to test both single and bulk emails
- Plans start at only $19
2. Sender Score
Sender Score is on a global mission to aid organizations in becoming better email senders. They provide businesses with several educational tools and resources to achieve their deliverability goals, along with a highly effective blocklist monitoring tool, which automatically detects whether your domain is on a return path blocklist.
Advantages of using Sender Score:
- The tool is integrated into their blocklist monitoring webpage
- It’s easy to use and instant
- It provides additional information on what DNSBLs and RBLs are
3. PowerDMARC’s Blocklist Monitoring Tool
PowerDMARC is a domain security and email authentication SaaS platform, with a range of DNS protocols and tools for well-rounded domain protection. Their blocklist monitoring tool is a powerful solution that actively monitors IP and DNS blocklists to help you maintain and recover your domain reputation.
Advantages of PowerDMARC:
- Monitor 200+ blocklists
- Setup Slack, Discord, email, and webhook alerts
- Explore more email security solutions like a DMARC analyzer
- Optimize SPF with hosted SPF services
4. Spamhaus
Spamhaus is well-known for its efforts in maintaining and providing real-time threat intelligence related to spam and cyber threats. Spamhaus can help you monitor real-time DNSBLs and RBLs, with 20+ years of industry experience. They have unparalleled data traffic visibility on spam resources - helping more than 3 billion users in their fight against spam.
Advantages of using Spamhaus:
- A no-brainer interface
- Access to blocklist removal center
- SBL, PBL, XBL, and DBL advisories
5. Zero Bounce
Zero Bounce includes a dedicated and passionate team of email validation experts who can help you achieve email delivery success. Their free IP and domain blocklist checker is a part of their extended services, helping organizations monitor their IP or domain name in real-time DNS blocklists.
Advantages of using Zero Bounce:
- Plenty of educational and awareness information about getting blocklisted
- Monitor your standard domain name, IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
- Email alerts are sent when your asset is detected in a blocklist
The Need for Monitoring Your Email Reputation
Monitoring DNS blocklists helps you keep tabs on your email reputation. Even if your own domain is not listed in these blocklists, by examining the domains listed in these resources you can prevent potential security threats. By monitoring these blocklists, domain owners can block these spam and phishing entities.
Another use case for blocklist monitoring is, of course, making sure that your domain never ends up there, and even if it does, so that you can quickly recover it without any adverse impact. Having your domain or IP address blocklisted can lead to really damaging effects such as an increased spam rate, email deliverability issues, and even dwindling the trust that customers have in your brand. Overall, it’s bad news, and you would want to know about it as soon as possible. This is why an effective monitoring tool can come in handy.
To continue maintaining a secure and trustworthy online presence, you can consider trying out the tools listed above to monitor your domain name or IP address - this will serve as a proactive step towards safeguarding your organization’s reputation and credibility!