Why You Can't DIY This
I'm not going to tell you that you can't.
You could run your domain through MXToolbox right now. It's free. Takes two minutes. I actually encourage it.
But here's what MXToolbox will tell you: whether your SPF record is valid. That's it.
It will not tell you that your DKIM selector is misaligned with your ESP's sending infrastructure. It will not tell you that you have a soft DMARC policy that Gmail is quietly ignoring. It will not tell you that 23% of your list is made up of addresses that are actively destroying your sender score every time you hit send.
It will give you a green checkmark and you will feel better for about four days.
I've had clients come to me with a perfect MXToolbox score and a 12% open rate. The tool said everything was fine. Everything was not fine.
Look, I get it. You could just ask ChatGPT.
And honestly? A lot of people do. Then they come to me.
Because here's the thing nobody tells you about using AI to fix your deliverability: the output is only as good as the question. If you don't know what to look for, you don't know what to ask. And if you don't know what to ask, you get an answer that sounds completely reasonable — and makes everything worse.
I've had clients come to me after following ChatGPT's instructions step by step. Everything looked right on paper. Their SPF was set up. Their DKIM was configured. Their DMARC was in place. And their emails were still going to spam — or worse, their entire sending setup was now broken in ways they couldn't see and couldn't explain.
That's not a ChatGPT problem. That's an experience problem.
The tools show you the data. I tell you what it means.
What I Bring That No Tool Can Replicate
Pattern recognition from 132+ investigations. I see the same issues coming up over and over again — the stuff that never shows up in a blog post or an AI response because most people don't even know it exists.
Access to professional-grade tools not publicly available. I'm not just running the same free checks you already ran. I'm looking at layers of your email infrastructure that the public tools don't surface.
Current knowledge of the 2024–2026 rule changes. Gmail and Yahoo updated their bulk sender requirements. The rules changed — and they will change again. What worked in 2022 can actively hurt you in 2026. I know what's actually happening in inboxes right now.
Two mentors with decades of experience. When I hit something I want to verify, I have two mentors I go to directly. Between them, they have decades of experience working with massive lists — every edge case, every weird configuration, every "this shouldn't be happening but it is" scenario. I don't guess. I confirm.
The problem isn't that you're not smart enough to figure this out. The problem is that you don't know what you don't know. And in email deliverability, what you don't know is exactly what's killing your results.