# Inbox placement tests

> Send one email from your mailboxes to Ballast's test inboxes and see inbox, spam or missing by provider and mailbox. Every plan, 10 tests a day.

Canonical: https://ballast.to/docs/placement-tests
Last updated: 2026-10-31

A placement test sends one email from your mailboxes to test inboxes Ballast keeps at the main email providers, then looks where it landed: the inbox, spam, or nowhere. It is on every plan, 10 tests a 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.

## Run a test

1. Open Placement tests under Deliverability and click New test, or click Test placement next to the save indicator in a campaign's Sequence tab.
2. Pick the email. From a campaign takes a step and variant, filled in for the campaign's first lead like the preview, and a follow-up in the same thread gets its `Re:` subject. Write one takes a subject and body.
3. Pick up to 10 mailboxes to send from. Each shows how many emails it has left today.
4. Read What happens: how many emails go out, which providers the test inboxes are at and how many of each, and anything worth knowing first, such as a variable with no value or no link domain yet. Then click Run test.

The first results show within a few minutes. The test page updates by itself while it runs.

## How the test emails go out

- Each mailbox writes to every test inbox, one email every 15 to 45 seconds, from its own sending IP, the way its campaign emails go.
- They count toward each mailbox's daily limit, not toward your plan's monthly emails. A mailbox without room today is left out, and the sheet says so before you run.
- They carry the unsubscribe link and one-click header your campaign emails carry, on your link domain. If the campaign tracks clicks or opens, the test email is tracked the same way, so the test matches what leads get. Nothing is counted.
- They never show in the Unibox, your leads or your campaign stats.
- A paused or broken mailbox, a workspace whose sending is on hold, or a mailbox still waiting for a sending IP doesn't send: the email is marked not sent, with the reason.

## Reading the results

Ballast looks for each email in its test inbox 2, 5, 10, 20, 40 and 60 minutes after it went out, in the inbox and the spam folder. It only looks: nothing is opened, moved or marked.

| Result | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| Inbox | Found in the inbox. For Gmail, the tab too: Primary, Promotions, Social, Updates or Forums. For Outlook, Focused or Other. |
| Spam | Found in the spam or junk folder. |
| Missing | Not found after 60 minutes. The provider dropped it, is still holding it, or bounced it. |
| Left out of the rate | Not sent, or the test inbox couldn't be read. It says nothing about your email, so it doesn't count either way. |

The inbox rate is the share of looked-up emails that reached the inbox. The test page breaks it down by provider and by mailbox, and lists every email with where it landed.

## What a result tells you

A test is a handful of inboxes on one day, so read it as a signal, not a forecast:

- Spam at one provider and inbox at the others usually points at that provider's view of your domain or IP. Check the domain's [deliverability report](https://ballast.to/docs/domains) and, for Gmail, the [spam rate](https://ballast.to/docs/domains#spam-complaints).
- Spam everywhere from every mailbox points at the email itself or the domain. Try the same test with a plain variant: no links, no images, a shorter first email.
- One mailbox in spam where the others land is that mailbox. Slow it down, keep its warmup on and test it again in a few days.
- Promotions instead of Primary is still the inbox, but fewer people read it. Links, images and formatting push Gmail that way.

Warmup's inbox rate counts warmup emails between pool mailboxes over 7 days. A placement test checks the email you are about to send, from the mailboxes that will send it. Use [warmup](https://ballast.to/warmup) to keep mailboxes healthy and a test before a launch or after you change the copy.

## Limits

- 10 tests per workspace in any 24 hours, on every plan, with up to 10 mailboxes each.
- Tests and their results are kept for 90 days.
- The test inboxes are Ballast's. You see them as "Gmail 1", "Outlook.com 2" and so on, never their addresses.

## From the API and your AI

Placement tests have their own [REST endpoints](https://ballast.to/docs/api/placement-tests). Over [MCP](https://ballast.to/docs/mcp), `list_placement_tests`, `get_placement_test`, `preview_placement_test` and `run_placement_test` are in the full toolset. Running a test shows what it will send and asks first, like a launch.