How Does My Email Work compares
There are several free tools that check email authentication records. Most of them were built for email administrators who already know what an SPF record is. Does My Email Work was built for the people who do not: site owners, agency clients, and the AI agents helping them. Here is how it stacks up against the free tools people reach for most often.
The tools
The three most common free alternatives are MxToolbox, Mailtester.com, and the Google Admin Toolbox (Check MX / Dig). They all do a competent job of surfacing raw DNS records. The difference is who they are for and what they leave you to figure out yourself.
Comparison
| Capability | Does My Email Work | MxToolbox | Mailtester.com | Google Admin Toolbox |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain-English results | Yes | No | Partial | No |
| Free / no signup | Yes | Limited free, signup for more | Yes | Yes |
| Public API | Yes (free, no key) | Paid API | No | No |
| MCP server for AI agents | Yes | No | No | No |
| Explains website-email vs mailbox-email | Yes | No | No | No |
| Sends a real email to an independent grader (not just your own inbox) | Yes | No | Yes, but manual | No |
What makes this different
The real test: what a stranger receives. Most tools, even ones with a "send test email" button, only confirm your message left your site by delivering it to your own inbox. But a letter mailed to your own house always arrives; that tells you nothing about whether a customer's inbox would accept it. We send a real email to an independent grader across town and read what actually showed up, the verdict an outside inbox gives you, not a self-graded one. Mail-Tester does this too, but by manual copy-paste; we build it into WordPress as one click.
Already using an SMTP plugin? WP Mail SMTP, Post SMTP and FluentSMTP change how your email is sent. They do not tell you whether it worked. Their "send test" button only confirms the message left your site; it cannot see whether Gmail authenticated it or which folder it landed in. After you set up an SMTP plugin, this is how you prove the fix actually worked.
Plain English, not raw records. Unlike MxToolbox and Google Toolbox, we do not just print v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all and walk away. We explain results in plain English so a site owner knows what is broken and what to do about it, without needing to learn DNS syntax first.
Built for AI agents. We are the only email authentication scanner with a public MCP server, so assistants like Claude and ChatGPT can run a deliverability check as a native tool and explain the result to your user. The public JSON API needs no key and no signup, which makes it a practical alternative when you want to script checks rather than click through a web form.
The right mental model. We are the first tool built specifically for the website-email vs mailbox-email gap - the reason a contact form can be silently dropping mail even though your inbox works fine. Most tools treat a domain as one thing. We help you see that the email your website sends and the email your mailbox sends can break independently, and we explain which one is failing.
If you already speak fluent DNS and just want a raw record dump, MxToolbox and the Google Admin Toolbox are perfectly good. If you want an answer you can act on, or you are an agent that needs a clean API or MCP tool, this is the alternative built for that.