Domains and the deliverability report
Every domain you send from gets a deliverability report: a score out of 100, a grade from A to F, and one row per check with the fix for anything missing. It's the same engine as the free domain checker, run on your domains every day.
Ballast is cold email software with every feature on every plan. Connect unlimited mailboxes, send sequences at a pace your domains survive, and handle replies in one inbox, priced by the emails you send.
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Adding a domain
Domains of connected mailboxes appear in Domains on their own. You can also add one before it has mailboxes, with Add domain. Owners and admins add and remove domains; a domain is removed only when no mailbox uses it.
Free email domains like gmail.com and outlook.com never become workspace domains: you can't change their DNS, so a grade would mean nothing. Mailboxes on them still work.
What is checked
| Check | Points | What passes |
|---|---|---|
| MX records | 15 | The domain has mail servers, so it can receive replies. |
| SPF | 20 | One SPF record, at most 10 DNS lookups, ending in -all or ~all (or a redirect). +all and ?all protect nothing. |
| DKIM | 20 | A valid signing key on one of the common selectors (Google, Microsoft 365, Zoho, Fastmail, Proton and the big sending services). |
| DMARC | 20 | One DMARC record with p=quarantine or p=reject and a rua address for reports. p=none gets part of the points. |
| Blacklists | 20 | The domain is on none of Spamhaus DBL, SURBL and URIBL, and its mail server IPs on none of Spamhaus ZEN, Barracuda, SpamCop, UCEPROTECT L1, PSBL and Mailspike. Each domain listing costs 10 points, each IP listing 5. |
| Domain age | 5 | Registered more than 30 days ago. New domains are a spam signal on their own. |
| MTA-STS, BIMI | 0 | Shown for information. They don't change the score. |
Custom DKIM selector? The dashboard checks the common ones. Run the free domain checker with your selector to see that key.
What the grades mean
| Grade | Score | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| A | 90 to 100 | Ready for cold email. |
| B | 75 to 89 | Almost ready. Fix the warnings before you ramp up. |
| C | 60 to 74 | Risky. Mailbox providers will doubt this domain. |
| D | 40 to 59 | Not ready. Expect the spam folder. |
| F | under 40 | Do not send from this domain yet. |
A good grade is the floor, not a promise. Nobody controls Gmail's filter; the report tells you the things receivers check first, and that Google and Yahoo require SPF, DKIM and DMARC from bulk senders.
Daily checks and history
- Ballast checks every workspace domain again once a day and keeps 90 days of scores, drawn as a small line next to each domain.
- Changed a DNS record? Press the refresh button on the domain to check it now. Results are cached for 10 minutes, so wait that long after a second change.
- The launch checklist warns when a campaign sends from a domain missing SPF, DKIM, DMARC or MX. It doesn't block the launch. See Campaigns.
Ballast reads DNS through its own resolver, because Spamhaus refuses queries from public resolvers like 8.8.8.8. A listing you see elsewhere but not here, or the other way round, usually comes from that.