Kickbox Deliverability Monitoring Tool Alternatives

Despite the significant improvements in digital advertising, email marketing remains one of the most potent tools for a reason: it delivers results! Email marketing campaigns allow you to segregate the audience according to their requirements and preferences, build mailing lists targeting specific customers, and send relevant emails that help solve their problems.

Are you a marketing leader or a startup founder searching for the best alternative to Kickbox’s deliverability monitoring suite? You’ve just navigated to the right page!

Kickbox’s deliverability tool was a valuable asset for monitoring email deliverability. However, the recent notice from Kickbox about discontinuing their deliverability monitoring service on January 15, 2024, has propelled their existing customers to find alternatives to Kickbox’s deliverability testing tool quickly.

While Kickbox offered a quality deliverability solution, its exit from the market creates an opportunity to re-evaluate needs and identify the right fit from a range of capable email deliverability vendors. We aim to highlight each service’s core capabilities, key strengths, and potential limitations, acting as an informational guide.

Understanding The Deliverability Landscape

Email marketing remains one of the most effective digital marketing channels, but only if your messages reliably reach the inbox. With deliverability playing such a crucial role, it’s essential to have robust email deliverability tools in place to monitor and optimize the performance of your email campaigns.

The recent announcement that Kickbox will sunset its deliverability suite in January 2024 has many email senders scrambling for alternatives for a new email deliverability vendor. In this article, we’ll compare five of the top deliverability vendors on the market to consider as a replacement for Kickbox: Email Industries, MailMonitor, Sendforensics, Everest, and Glockapps.

Before diving into the comparisons, it’s helpful to level-set what deliverability vendors and tools provide and why they are integral to email success.

At its core, deliverability refers to the ability of an email message to reach the intended recipient’s inbox rather than getting filtered out as spam or remaining undelivered. A deliverability tool or vendor provides ways to monitor key metrics like spam filter traps, inbox placement rates, ISP reputation, and more.

With this data, senders can proactively identify potential issues and fine-tune their strategies, protecting sender reputation and improving email reach. This is crucial, considering high deliverability rates translate directly to greater subscriber engagement, lower bounce and complaint rates, and stronger campaign ROI.

With the right deliverability tool, senders can benefit from:

• Visibility into email deliverability and engagement
• Early warning systems for blocklisting
• Identification of inactive or invalid email addresses
• Personalized inbox placement diagnostics
• Ongoing monitoring of ISP reputation
• Detailed deliverability analytics and reporting

However, not all email deliverability vendors take the same approach regarding features, functionality, delivery, and service. Assessing your organization’s specific needs and priorities is critical to make the optimal choice. Our goal with these comparisons is to illuminate those key differences.

Comparison of the Top Deliverability Vendors

Email Industries: Best Overall and Full-Service Option

Email Industries distinguishes itself by taking a full-service approach to deliverability, providing end-to-end strategy, monitoring, and optimization. For companies seeking an integrated, high-touch partnership, Email Industries delivers robust capabilities with the benefit of dedicated deliverability experts.

Key Strengths:

• Testing of email deliverability at over 90 major email providers globally to identify potential issues and optimize inbox placement.
• Monitors the reputation of your domains and IP addresses to protect deliverability and inbox placement.
• Ideal for brands who want expertise and guidance without needing to learn or manage software tools themselves.
• Robust deliverability tools, including predictive analytics, threat monitoring, and email verification powered by Alfred and the Blackbox dataset.
• Ongoing optimization and guidance ensure senders can stay focused on strategy rather than needing to monitor and manage software tools.
• Established email deliverability services company with over 20 years of email deliverability expertise.

Potential Limitations:

• Comprehensive services and dedicated support come at a slightly higher cost, which may be worth the investment for brands prioritizing expertise-driven strategy over self-serve affordability.
• The managed service model provides less autonomy for hands-on senders but may be appreciated by brands wanting experienced partners fully managing optimization using analytics.
• Works best for brands seeking a trusted ongoing partnership rather than one-off services, ensuring dedicated strategic account management over time.

Best For: Senders of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises, who want dedicated experts to manage email deliverability while they focus on strategic marketing programs and great creative.

MailMonitor: Monitoring Specialists

MailMonitor focuses on providing monitoring capabilities for email deliverability. Their deliverability tools aim to identify issues early and enable data-driven delivery strategies.

Key Strengths:

• Granular monitoring metrics across a range of categories.
• Integration with leading ESPs and CRMs.
• Self-serve access empowers internal deliverability management.
• Deliverability assessments and ongoing monitoring.

Potential Limitations:

• Less hands-on consulting or optimization.
• Smaller feature set compared to full-suite solutions.
• Requires technical aptitude for setup and management.

Best For: Senders focused on self-serve monitoring with an advanced understanding of deliverability.

Sendforensics: Focused On Deliverability Testing

As the name suggests, Sendforensics is purpose-built around deliverability testing and analytics capabilities for email. Their approach emphasizes diagnostics and insights to inform better delivery.

Key Strengths:

• Unlimited deliverability and spam testing abilities.
• Real-time alerting based on live inbox placement checks.
• Dedicated IP address support and configuration.
• Strong focus on actionable data and recommendations.

Potential Limitations:

• Lacks seed lists for testing email delivery across a global range of ISPs. 
• Less emphasis on list management or identifying inactive subscribers
• Delayed rendering of email previews and inconsistent support response times have been reported, potentially slowing workflows.
• Integrations are limited primarily to email service providers rather than a full suite of related tools.
• Real-time monitoring and alerts are unavailable, relying instead on manual checks and assessments.
• Setup processes like DMARC implementation may be overly complex for some users’ needs.
• Light touch strategy and consulting services.
• Requires moderate technical knowledge to extract full value.

Best For: Senders with technical expertise who prioritize targeted deliverability testing and have resources for manual monitoring.

Everest by Validity: A Robust Deliverability Platform

Validity’s Everest platform provides a wide breadth of monitoring, analytics, and simulation capabilities for deliverability management, along with adjacent services like reputation scoring and list validation.

Key Strengths:

• Predictive deliverability analytics and scoring.
• Campaign previews to model performance pre-send.
• Holistic platform integrates related solutions like sender identity and authentication.
• Robust features accessible for both small and large senders.
• Deliverability certification and training programs.

Potential Limitations:

• As a premium solution, the price point is prohibitive for senders with basic needs or budgets.
• The extensive feature set requires significant ramp-up time and technical expertise, especially for smaller teams with limited resources.
• Complex setup and steeper learning curve even for those with deliverability experience.
• Fragmented onboarding and support processes have posed challenges, according to some customers.
• List validation functionality may be overly strict or limited for some use cases.
• Hands-on optimization guidance is less of a focus compared to robust analytics.

Best For: Larger established brands with dedicated deliverability resources to manage a powerful but complex platform.

GlockApps: Deliverability Essentials

GlockApps delivers an affordable package of deliverability must-haves like inbox testing, blacklist monitoring, and spam checks. Their tools aim to help new and growing senders monitor and build sender reputations.

Key Strengths:

• Broad essential feature set.
• Easy to configure for individuals and small businesses.
• Spam testing and inbox placement diagnostics.
• DMARC and authentication monitoring.

Potential Limitations:

• With seed lists monitoring just 5 ISPs, visibility is limited compared to more robust platforms.
• Link analytics have inconsistencies in detecting issues with some major providers.
• Significant price increases have been imposed on short notice, according to some users.
• In-depth analysis and strategic optimizations beyond the basics are not provided.
• May be difficult for some users to interpret data without expertise.
• Those wanting extensive features, consulting, and global ISP testing may need to upgrade.
• While deliverability fundamentals are covered, customers have cited misleading claims around money-back guarantees and upselling.

Best For: Senders prioritizing basic deliverability testing and insights over advanced features and consulting.

eDataSource: Deliverability & Competitive Intelligence

eDataSource provides accredited sender status, auditing, and monitoring to enhance deliverability through close collaborations with major mailbox providers.

Key Strengths:

• Established relationships and reputation with ISPs.
• Accredited sender status and certification services.
• Highly customized deliverability auditing.

Potential Limitations:

• With inbox monitoring restricted to four consumer ISPs, eDataSource offers less comprehensive coverage than alternatives.
• Hands-on management and execution not included.
• Requires a high budget for intensive strategy services.
• Limited self-serve tools or user autonomy.

Best For: Large enterprises prioritizing accredited sender status with leading ISPs over comprehensive monitoring and optimization.

Mailgun Optimize: Automated Deliverability Tools

Mailgun Optimize integrates automated deliverability testing and monitoring tools into Mailgun’s leading email infrastructure platform.

Key Strengths:

• Broad suite of self-serve deliverability tools.
• Integrates directly with email-sending platform.
• Dedicated account management and strategic support.
• Real-time inbox and spam testing capabilities.
• Automated monitoring and alerting.

Potential Limitations:

• Requires using Mailgun to access tools.
• Less focus on in-depth consulting services.
• More flexibility is needed compared to standalone tools.

Best For: Current Mailgun users who want integrated deliverability tools.

Choosing the Right Deliverability Partner

With a range of capable alternatives to Kickbox’s discontinued solution, senders now face the task of identifying the right fit for their deliverability needs and priorities. There are a few key considerations to inform your selection:

• Available resources and technical expertise – Can your team manage a self-serve tool or do you need hands-on guidance?
• Current deliverability processes – Is this filling a gap or enhancing existing efforts?
• Budget parameters – What pricing models align best with spending requirements?
• Related capabilities needed – Just deliverability or a more integrated solution?
• Depth of analytics required – Are basic metrics sufficient or more granular?

The good news is there are alternatives to suit everything from enterprise email programs to small startups. Take stock of your current strengths, identify potential gaps, and match those needs to the solution with the right blend of features, functionality, and support.

While the options provided a starting point, perform due diligence beyond basic feature comparisons. Test trial offerings when available, read real user reviews, understand any limitations around list sizes or email volume, and confirm capabilities match your specific email infrastructure.

With the right deliverability partner in place, you’ll ensure your critical email marketing metrics – and the health of your business – remain on the right track even after Kickbox sunsets its services. Deliverability is an investment that yields immense returns, making this evaluation well worth the effort. Don’t go at it alone. Schedule a free consultation with the deliverability experts at Email Industries today to evaluate your specific needs and identify the best solution for your email program’s success.