Comparison docket
How Does My Email Work compare
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
Exhibit A · capability matrix
Swipe or scroll the matrix for all columns.
| Tool | Plain English | No signup | Public API | MCP for AI | Site vs inbox | Stranger inbox | In WordPress |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Does My Email Work | Yes | Yes | Yes (free, no key) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MxToolbox | No | Limited free, signup for more | Paid API | No | No | Yes, but manual | No |
| Mailtester.com | Partial | Yes | Paid API | No | No | Yes, but manual | No |
| Google Admin Toolbox | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
What makes this different
The real test: what a stranger receives. Some tools do not test real delivery at all; others, like Mail-Tester and MxToolbox's deliverability check, do send to an independent inbox but make you copy-paste an address, send to it by hand, then read a technical report. We run that same real-delivery test, but we build it into WordPress as one click and grade the result in plain English, so you get the verdict an outside inbox gives you, not a self-graded one, without leaving your dashboard.
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. This scanner ships 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. This tool is built specifically around 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.
Pricing, free tiers, and feature claims last verified July 5, 2026.