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Sample Spam Report

What the Email Spam Checker returns for one email: the spam score, the three buckets, the fixes in order of impact, and the message's headers.

The report

PALISADEpalisade.email

Sample spam report for acme.example

Generated with Palisade's free tools: create an account at app.palisade.email for white-label PDF reports.

Sample report for acme.example

acme.example logo

A worked example: a Mailchimp campaign sent for a domain that was never authenticated in Mailchimp. Run your own test

From
Acme <hello@acme.example>
Subject
Summer product update
Sent via
Mailchimp
Sending IP
198.51.100.24 (mail198.atl51.mcsv.net)
49

Spam score

49 of 100 · Grade F

Higher is better.

Scored on the 94 pts we could evaluate.

High risk. Failed DMARC and IP blocklist checks set the verdict, whatever the number. 7 problems to fix, starting with DMARC result.

Band and grade set by the DMARC and IP blocklist failures, not the number.

Authentication17 of 50 pts
Sender reputation18 of 30 pts
Content quality11 of 14 pts · 6 pts not counted

Fix these in order

Biggest impact first. Each one says what we saw, why receivers care, and what to change.

  1. DMARC passes when SPF or DKIM passes and aligns with the From domain. A DMARC fail tells every receiver that the From address could not be tied to an authorized sender, and under an enforcing policy the message is quarantined or rejected.

    • Fail: DMARC result: Neither SPF nor DKIM passed and aligned with the From domain.

    Fix

    Neither SPF nor DKIM passed and aligned with acme.example. Fix alignment first: an aligned DKIM signature is the durable route because it survives forwarding.

    Sources: RFC 9989 (DMARC)

Everything else we checked (14)

Checks that could not be evaluated, observations that carry no points, and the checks that passed.

  • BIMI3 pts, counted as 0 until DMARC record is fixed

    BIMI is only evaluated once the domain enforces DMARC (p=quarantine or p=reject).

  • Spam filter score4 pts not counted

    Spam filter scan was not available for this message.

  • Body link blocklists2 pts not counted

    Spam filter scan was not available for this message.

  • Not evaluated: ARC: No ARC seal on this message, which is normal for direct sends.
  • Pass: HTML to text ratio: 1.8, with a plain-text part.
  • Pass: full points
  • Warn: half points, rounded down
  • Fail: no points
  • Not evaluated: not counted, or counted as 0 while it waits on another fix

DMARC is failing for your domain

Palisade reads your DMARC reports, finds every sender failing alignment, and drafts the fix for each. You approve before anything ships.

Fix DMARC
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What each section means

Band, grade and verdict
The band (High risk, At risk, Solid, Excellent) is the short answer, and the verdict sentence says what drives it. A failed DMARC check, a failed SPF or DKIM check while DMARC does not pass, or a listing on a major IP blocklist sets the band to High risk and the grade to F whatever the number, because receivers act on those alone. Otherwise the grade is the letter for the score, A to F.
Spam score and the three buckets
The score is out of 100, higher is better. Authentication is worth 50 points, sender reputation 30 and content quality 20. A pass earns a check's full points, a warn earns half (rounded down), a fail earns none. The score is the share of the points we could evaluate, so a check we could not run is left out and never lowers it.
Fix these in order
Every failed or warned check, biggest gain first. Open one to see the sub-checks, the DNS records or headers it read, the fix with the message's own values filled in, and the requirement it comes from. The points chip counts what the fix itself earns; a line under the fix says when it also lets other checks be evaluated.
Not evaluated and passed
A check waiting on another fix (BIMI needs an enforcing DMARC policy) is counted as 0 until that fix lands, and scores only if it then passes. A check that could not run (no spam filter available) is left out of the score with the reason. Passed checks are listed so you can see what already works.
Headers
The headers our receiving server stored, run through the same browser-side parser as the email header analyzer: the delivery path hop by hop, the recorded authentication results, and the identity headers.

The report above is a worked example, not a live test. To see your own, create a test address and send it one real email.