Sender Reputation: The Score That Decides Your Inbox Fate
What sender reputation is, what drives it up or down, and how to build and protect it over time.
Sender reputation is the trust score mailbox providers assign to your domain and IP. It is the single biggest factor in whether you reach the inbox — content barely matters if reputation is poor.
What drives it
- Complaint rate — keep it well under 0.1%.
- Bounce rate — clean lists, remove dead addresses.
- Engagement — opens, clicks and replies raise it; ignores lower it.
- Authentication — SPF, DKIM, DMARC must pass.
- Consistency — steady volume beats erratic spikes.
Send email that actually lands in the inbox
API and visual editor, SPF/DKIM/DMARC out of the box, analytics and warm IPs. Free tier — 200 emails/month, no card required.
It is domain and IP based
Both your domain and sending IP carry reputation. A warm shared pool inherits a managed IP reputation; your domain reputation you build yourself through good sending habits.
Recovering a damaged reputation
It is slow. Stop bad sending, prune to your most engaged contacts, and rebuild volume gradually — exactly like a fresh warm-up.
Protect it from day one
Sendersy manages IP reputation and surfaces complaint and bounce signals early so you act before damage spreads. Start free.
Builds the Sendersy sending stack. Ten years deep in deliverability, SPF/DKIM/DMARC and IP reputation.
Read next
Email Deliverability: 12 Fixes to Land in the Inbox, Not Spam
A practical checklist to improve email deliverability — authentication, list hygiene, content, and reputation, in plain language.
How to Reduce Email Bounce Rate (and Why It Matters)
Hard vs soft bounces, what a healthy bounce rate looks like, and the exact steps to keep yours low and your reputation high.