SendPulse deliverability issues: what to check and in what order

SendPulse deliverability issues tend to come from the same small set of causes as most multi-channel ESPs: authentication not fully active, list engagement decay, or shared infrastructure reputation. Work through them in this order before assuming the platform itself is at fault.

Authentication: verify, don't assume

SendPulse's domain settings page generates SPF and DKIM records specific to your account. Copy the exact DKIM selector and any return-path or bounce-handling subdomain from that screen at the time you configure it - these values are account-specific, and assuming a generic or remembered value is a common source of silent authentication failure. Confirm propagation directly:

dig TXT yourdomain.com +short
dig TXT _dmarc.yourdomain.com +short

If SPF is present but DKIM shows as "pending" or unverified in SendPulse's own dashboard, outbound mail is authenticating on SPF alone, which several major providers now treat as insufficient for bulk senders without DKIM and DMARC alignment as well.

Why reported open rates can mislead you about real deliverability

Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-fetches images for a significant share of Apple Mail recipients independent of whether a human opened the message, which inflates open rate in SendPulse's reports the same way it does for any ESP. A stable or rising open rate alongside a falling reply or click-to-open rate is a pattern worth investigating directly rather than trusting the headline open number.

List hygiene specific to multi-channel accounts

Because SendPulse accounts often combine email with SMS and chatbot audiences, it is easy to import or sync a broader contact list than was ever confirmed for email specifically. Before a volume increase, confirm:

Shared infrastructure reputation

SendPulse's standard sending tier uses shared IP infrastructure for most accounts. Placement can shift due to other senders on the same pool, independent of anything you have changed. If a sudden, unexplained drop in placement does not correlate with any change on your end, check whether it coincides with a broader pattern across your sending history rather than assuming a one-off content issue.

What SendPulse's dashboard cannot show you

Delivered, in SendPulse's reporting, reflects a successful SMTP handoff - not inbox placement. A message that lands in spam or Gmail's Promotions tab still reports as delivered. Real placement requires sending to a panel of seed addresses across Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo and checking the actual folder each copy lands in - something campaign-level reporting in SendPulse, like most ESPs, does not provide.

Cross-channel sending and shared sender identity

Because SendPulse ties email, SMS, and chatbot sending to one account and often one brand identity, a reputational issue in one channel - a high SMS opt-out rate, for example - will not directly affect email deliverability, since mailbox providers evaluate email-specific signals. But it's still worth treating each channel's audience and engagement data as distinct when deciding who belongs on an active email list, rather than assuming cross-channel engagement implies email engagement specifically - a contact who clicks through chatbot messages reliably has told you nothing about whether they open or read email from the same brand, and mailing them as though it has is how multi-channel accounts end up with lower email engagement than their list size would suggest.

Checking reputation independent of the SendPulse dashboard

Because SendPulse combines multiple channels in one account, it is worth checking sending-domain reputation through a source independent of the platform's own reporting - Google Postmaster Tools for Gmail-specific domain reputation, and a seed-inbox test for placement across providers generally. An independent view catches problems that a single-platform dashboard, however well designed, cannot show by definition: how your domain looks from the receiving side, not just the sending side.

What not to do

Do not treat a chatbot or SMS engagement metric as a proxy for email engagement when deciding who stays on an email list. The channels have different engagement dynamics, and importing that assumption into email sending risks mailing contacts who were never actually responsive to email.

Do not increase email send frequency to compensate for a falling engagement trend. If the underlying cause is reputation or list quality, more volume accelerates the problem.

Where MailPilot fits

MailPilot does not integrate with SendPulse. For the sending domain or mailbox behind your SendPulse email sends, if it is reachable over OAuth (Gmail, Outlook) or SMTP/IMAP (SendGrid, Amazon SES, Mailgun, Postmark, custom SMTP), MailPilot verifies SPF/DKIM/DMARC against the live DNS record, runs seed-inbox placement tests, and tracks daily per-mailbox reputation - the layer SendPulse's own dashboard does not cover.