Deliverability Rescue is a done-for-you rescue service for cold-email senders — agencies, outbound teams, and founders — whose domains got burned. Start with a free 100-point audit: one page, every failed check named, back within 1 business day.
Get the Free Audit| Section | Result | The finding that matters |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication — SPF / DKIM / DMARC | FAIL | Two conflicting SPF records; DKIM signing off; DMARC reports going to a dead mailbox |
| Blacklists & reputation | FAIL | Domain listed on Spamhaus DBL; Google Postmaster rates it Low, spam rate 0.4% |
| Warmup & sending behavior | FAIL | Warmup off on 11 of 18 inboxes; volume went 0 → 45/inbox/day on 19-day-old domains |
| Tool configuration | AT RISK | Per-inbox limit set to 50 (plan: 25); bounce auto-pause off — one campaign ran 4 days at 6.8% bounces |
| Copy & list practices | AT RISK | URL shortener + 2 links in step 1; last list sent unverified; no opt-out line |
Not "we optimized your deliverability." Records — before and after, verifiable by anyone with a lookup tool.
A single "deliverability rate" hides the truth. Every Sprint closes with a seed placement test on your real copy, from your real inbox, reported like this:
The audit instrument is a fixed, versioned checklist — the same one the free audit, the Sprint, and monthly monitoring all run. A finding you can't re-check yourself is just an opinion; every line below names its evidence.
SPF validity, single record, ≤10 lookups, real senders covered · DKIM actually signing, 2048-bit, aligned, verified on live mail · DMARC policy, live reporting address, enforcement stage.
Typical find: DMARC rua pointing at a mailbox deleted two rebrands ago.
Spamhaus DBL/ZEN, Barracuda, SpamCop, SORBS and 100+ lists swept · Google Postmaster domain + IP reputation and spam rate · Microsoft SNDS status and complaint signals.
Typical find: a DBL listing quietly junking mail for three weeks.
Warmup on, warmup age vs volume start, per-inbox caps (≤30/day), ramp shape, bounce rate (<2%), complaint rate (<0.1%), rotation and reply handling.
Typical find: volume tripled the same week warmup was toggled off.
Inside your actual Instantly / Smartlead setup: custom tracking domain set and used, provider matching, bounce auto-pause, plain-text mode, spin variation, limits that match the plan.
Typical find: DNS has the tracking domain; the tool still sends its default.
Line-by-line trigger scan of your live sequence, link count, shorteners, attachments, opt-out line, merge-field rendering — plus list verification and suppression hygiene.
Typical find: one unverified list at 6.8% bounces, poisoning the rest.
Every report ends with one sentence naming the single most probable cause, dated and evidenced — because "deliverability issues" is not a diagnosis, and diagnosis quality is the product.
Plus an honest salvageability call per domain — before you pay anything.
Three steps. The free one comes first, and it can end with "you don't need us."
Free — 1 business day
Send up to 3 sending domains + your tool. No passwords, no account access — the audit runs on public records and your answers. You get the scored one-page report with the fix list in priority order.
$549 / $1,099 — 5 business days
We execute the fix list: authentication rebuilt, delistings filed in the right order, tool reconfigured, sequence passed, and a dated warmup & recovery plan. Verified by auth checks + a seed placement test.
$149/mo / $349/mo agency
Most burns are regressions — a toggled setting, a new list, a volume change. Watch re-runs your score weekly, tests placement monthly, and flags the next slip the day it appears.
Deliverability consultants charge $150–$500/hr and quote audits at $1,500–$5,000 with a 7–10 day wait — diagnosis only. Ours is fixed, done-for-you, and the audit is free.
Weekly authentication + blacklist sweep on your domains, a monthly seed placement test, Postmaster/SNDS review, and a same-day flag with first-response fix notes when something slips. Agency tier includes a monthly health report written to forward to your client.
No inbox-placement guarantees. No open-rate or reply-rate promises. No reputation-recovery dates. Placement belongs to Google and Microsoft; recovery timelines belong to them and to the blacklist operators. Any operator who guarantees them is selling you a story, and the expensive consultants in this market will tell you the same.
What the Sprint does guarantee is the work itself: every one of the 100 checks run, every fixable failure fixed and verified, every third-party submission filed and documented with its real status. And the honest call comes before payment: a domain our audit judges unsalvageable is called that in the free audit — and if a Sprint concludes mid-work that a domain can't be rescued, the remaining scope converts to a fresh-domain build at no extra charge.
Why not just buy new domains? Sometimes you should — the audit says so when it's true. But a new domain costs 14–21 days of warmup before it carries volume, and if the cause (auth setup, list, volume pattern) isn't fixed, it burns on the same schedule. We audit setups on their fourth set of domains. The Sprint is for the case where the domain has history worth saving — or a client deadline that can't wait three weeks.
The same answers we give in writing, in every quote.
No — and that's the most important sentence on this page. Nobody can guarantee placement; mailbox providers decide it, and they re-decide it daily. What we guarantee is the diagnosis (every check run, evidenced), the fixes (every fixable failure fixed and verified on live mail), and the filings (delistings and provider requests submitted and documented with real status). Operators who promise the inbox are promising something that isn't theirs to sell.
The Sprint's own work completes in 5 business days. The third-party tail runs on real clocks: most domain blacklist removals clear in 1–7 days after the root-cause fix; Google Postmaster reputation typically recovers over 2–4 weeks of clean sending on the recovery curve; Microsoft junk-folder recovery runs 1–3 weeks. Your completion report dates each item with its observed range instead of inventing a finish line.
For the free audit: domain names, your sending tool, and a 2-minute intake. No passwords, no account access — the audit runs on public records. For a Sprint: DNS access by delegated invite or a guided session (never a password by email), your tool details, and a test inbox. Access is removed at close, with confirmation.
Instantly and Smartlead ship genuinely good placement tests — we use their outputs in our own audits. The tool tells you that placement dropped. The work after that — DNS rebuilds, delisting filings in the right order, a reputation recovery plan, one accountable operator for all of it this week — sits outside the tool's edge, which is exactly where support will (fairly) stop. Run the free audit and compare it against what support told you; that's a fair test of us.
Often, yes — the audit report is genuinely the whole map, and it stays free. People buy the Sprint for three reasons: speed (a client deliverable is due before a self-taught DNS education ends), correctness under pressure (a delisting filed before the root-cause fix gets you re-listed, harder), and accountability (one operator whose completion report has to prove every fix). If none of those bind you, DIY with our blessing — and take the free re-audit after, to check your own work.
Then the free audit says so, before you pay — young, listed, Bad-reputation domains are frequently cheaper to replace than rehabilitate. Fresh Domain Setup ($249) builds up to 3 replacements properly from day one: authentication, tracking alignment, warmup enrollment, tool connection, seed-verified before your first cold send. If a Sprint reaches the replace verdict mid-work, the remaining scope converts to that build at no extra charge.
We audit it if you send from it — and the first finding will almost certainly be that cold mail should never touch it. Cold sending belongs on separate domains so a burn stays a marketing problem instead of becoming "our invoices are in spam too." Setting that separation up correctly is standard Sprint scope.
Every day of sending on a damaged domain makes the recovery longer. Send your domains now; the scored report is in your inbox within 1 business day — and if it comes back healthy, you've lost nothing but two minutes.
Get the Free Audit