It can be alarming to see a third-party warmup or inbox-placement tool report a high spam rate — sometimes even when you've only been warming up and haven't sent real campaigns yet. In most cases this is normal and doesn't mean something is broken. Here's what's going on and what to do.
During warmup, some emails are expected to land in spam
Warmup works by sending and interacting with seed emails to gradually build your sending reputation. Early in that process, before a mailbox has much history, it's normal for a portion of those emails to land in spam. The number usually improves on its own as warmup continues, which is exactly why warmup should run continuously for the full ramp-up period rather than being paused or judged too early.
Placement varies by provider and recipient type
Inbox placement is often very different between providers — for example, you might see strong inbox placement at Outlook but more spam placement at Gmail, or the reverse.
Results also depend on the type of recipient. Tests against business (B2B) addresses can read differently from tests against personal (B2C) inboxes.
A single snapshot from one tool, against one set of test inboxes, isn't always representative of how real recipients receive your mail.
Why it can differ from your dashboard's reputation indicator
A reputation indicator in your account and a third-party tool's spam score are measuring different things in different ways, so they won't always agree. A "high" reputation in your dashboard reflects the sending signals we track, while an external tool is reporting its own placement test at a moment in time. A mismatch between the two is common and usually isn't a cause for concern on its own. For how to read your dashboard scores, see Understanding your mailbox reputation scores (Google Score & Microsoft Score).
What you can do
Keep warmup running continuously and give it the full ramp-up period before judging the results.
Don't jump to full sending volume too quickly — ramp up gradually.
Re-test consistently (same tool, same conditions) so you're comparing like with like over time.
Make sure your message content and sending settings follow good cold-email practice, since content also affects placement.
If a high spam rate persists well beyond the warmup period, or you're seeing it in real campaigns, contact us with your account email and the domains or mailboxes involved so we can review your deliverability and help you improve it. Related: My mailboxes show as "burned", "blacklisted", or low reputation — what it means.