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When it comes to email marketing, deliverability is key. You can create the best campaigns in the world. But if your emails never reach your audience’s inbox, they won’t deliver results.
At EmailTooltester, we’ve been monitoring Mailchimp’s email deliverability for years. Historically, we ran bi-annual deliverability tests using seed lists to track inbox placement. These gave us valuable snapshots, but the results became increasingly unreliable due to changes in spam filters and email client behavior, especially after Gmail and Yahoo’s 2024 updates.
So, in 2025, we’ve adopted a new, more actionable approach to deliverability testing.
Our Updated Approach: Feature-Based Deliverability Ratings
Rather than testing inbox placement with seed lists, we now evaluate each email provider based on the tools and features they offer to help improve your chances of landing in the inbox.
These include:
- Authentication support (SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
- Automatic suppression of bounces and spam complaints
- IP warmup and dedicated IP options
- Built-in list hygiene tools or integrations
- Access to deliverability dashboards and experts
Each provider receives a score out of 5 based on these criteria. This allows for a more consistent and fair comparison between platforms, based on what really matters.
So, how does Mailchimp's deliverability measure up in 2025?
Key Mailchimp Deliverability Features
When it comes to supporting strong inbox placement, Mailchimp offers a mix of essential deliverability features, though it's missing a fair few advanced options found in competing platforms.
Let’s take a closer look:
| Deliverability Feature | Score (out of 0.5) | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Enforces proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup | 0 | Does not offer full SPF alignment by default |
| Authentication wizard/guide | 0.5 | In-app instructions and help center resources available |
| Automatic suppression of bounces, unsubscribes, complaints | 0.5 | Managed automatically across all accounts |
| Feedback loop (FBL) data | 0.5 | Yes, provides visibility into who marked messages as spam |
| Access to deliverability team | 0.5 | Dedicated deliverability team access for higher-tier users |
| Deliverability dashboard | 0.0 | No standalone dashboard showing inbox performance |
| Health score/indicator | 0.0 | No reputation score or health indicator provided |
| Built-in list cleaning or integration | 0.0 | No built-in or partnered list cleaning tools |
| Strict on purchased lists | 0.5 | Does not allow purchased/rented email lists |
| IP warmup guidance or dedicated IP support | 0.5 | Dedicated IP available for high-volume senders ($29.95/mo) with warmup help |
| Total Score | 3.0 / 5.0 | Lacks advanced deliverability tools like dashboards and FBL data |
What Mailchimp Offers for Deliverability (and What’s Missing)
While Mailchimp remains one of the most popular email marketing platforms on the market, our feature-based review highlights some key gaps when it comes to supporting long-term deliverability.
Let’s break down what Mailchimp does well (and where it falls short).
The Basics Are Covered
Mailchimp does a good job of covering the foundational deliverability requirements:
- Authentication support: Mailchimp supports DKIM, and DMARC authentication for custom sending domains. You’ll need to set these up yourself via DNS, but Mailchimp provides adequate documentation to guide you through the process.
- Bounce and spam complaint suppression: Like most ESPs, Mailchimp automatically handles hard bounces and unsubscribes to protect your sender reputation. You won’t be allowed to email those contacts again unless they explicitly resubscribe.
- Deliverability support team: Mailchimp offers access to a trained support team that works with our in-house deliverability experts to assist customers with questions free of charge via phone call, email,l and ticket system – on higher tier plans.
- Purchased list restrictions: Mailchimp has long had a strict policy against the use of purchased or scraped email lists, a critical rule for deliverability, since such lists typically contain spam traps and inactive addresses.
- Dedicated IP option: For high-volume senders (Mailchimp recommends 100,000+ emails/month), a dedicated IP can be purchased as an add-on for $29.95/month. Mailchimp also provides a warmup schedule to help ease into using the new IP.
These are all helpful tools that lay a solid foundation for deliverability, but in reality, they only go so far.
Mailchimp Deliverability Features: What’s Missing?
What separates strong deliverability support from great deliverability support are the tools that help you actively monitor and optimize inbox placement. This is where Mailchimp begins to lag behind.
- Full SPF Alignment: Mailchimp’s return-path uses its own domain, so SPF isn’t fully aligned by default. DKIM is enabled, and custom domain authentication can fix alignment.
- No deliverability dashboard or health score: Unlike platforms like Klaviyo or Omnisend, Mailchimp doesn’t provide a centralized dashboard that shows your sender reputation, inbox placement metrics, or overall deliverability health. You’ll only see the most standard campaign-level metrics (opens, clicks, bounces), which aren’t enough to diagnose deeper deliverability problems.
- No built-in list cleaning or integrations: Mailchimp does not include any tools for identifying risky or inactive contacts. While they do offer segmentation based on engagement, there’s no direct way to verify email validity or proactively clean your list without using external tools that aren’t integrated.
Why This Matters
Deliverability is no longer just about avoiding spam traps or formatting your emails correctly. It’s about monitoring your performance and adapting quickly when problems arise.
A platform that gives you visibility into your sender reputation, spam complaints, and list health, like MailerLite or ActiveCampaign, makes it easier to stay ahead of deliverability issues before they affect your business.
Unfortunately, Mailchimp’s limited toolkit means users are left somewhat in the dark. And with major changes from Gmail and Yahoo in 2024 around spam filtering and authentication requirements, this lack of visibility is a growing concern.
Final thoughts: Mailchimp Deliverability
While Mailchimp remains a widely used platform, its deliverability toolkit falls behind many of its competitors. It covers the basics, offering support for domain authentication, bounce handling, and strict list usage policies, but lacks the deeper deliverability infrastructure now offered by more advanced platforms.
The absence of a centralized dashboard, spam complaint data, built-in list validation, or direct access to deliverability specialists means that users are often left without the insights needed to troubleshoot issues or improve performance over time.
And although Mailchimp does offer a dedicated IP option, it's limited to high-volume senders and comes with an extra fee.
These limitations earned Mailchimp our lowest score among all reviewed platforms in 2025. For users prioritizing deliverability, especially at scale, we’d recommend exploring stronger Mailchimp alternatives like MailerLite, Brevo, or ActiveCampaign.
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20 June 2025 - rewrite of the article based on new deliverability tests
07 May 2024 - Small update about Omnivore
27 March 2024 - Updated url
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This article has been written and researched following our EmailTooltester methodology.
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