cold email criticA second set of eyes for your outreach
Cold Email Checker
Cold Email Critic is a free cold email checker that scores your draft out of 100. It checks the subject line, opener, value proposition, call to action and warning signs for your industry and email type, with a suggestion for every issue. The rules were tested on about 1,100 real cold emails. No sign-up needed.
Paste your email below. Select context, industry, and type. Get a score out of 100 with specific issues and fixes.
Your draft
No account neededYour email is sent to our server only to score it. It is not stored.
What this cold email checker looks at
The checker scores your email across five sections, each worth up to 20 points. Every flag comes with a specific suggestion, not just a warning. How the score is calculated.
Checks length, word count, all-caps, spam trigger words, known outreach filter phrases, vague patterns like "quick question" or "touching base," and unicode bold characters used to fake formatting in inboxes. Why the subject line is where most cold email dies.
Flags unfilled merge tags, lists of websites and pasted site metrics like DA or DR (the most common patterns in link-seller outreach), quoted fake threads, weak filler openers like "I hope this email finds you well," and checks for personalisation signals. How to open a cold email without reading like a template.
Checks length against published benchmarks, looks for a clear benefit to the reader, and flags self-centred framing like "we offer" and "our company" and heavy jargon. How long should a cold email be.
Flags passive closes like "let me know your thoughts," high-commitment asks like "30-minute call" in a first email, multiple competing questions, missing signatures, and rewards a well-placed P.S.
Applies a separate rule set based on your selected industry (iGaming, SaaS, recruitment and more) and email type (Sales, Link building / Outreach, Recruitment, Affiliate / Partnership). Catches phrases that are fine in general email but red flags in your specific context.
How cold email best practices shaped the rules
The scoring rules were built and tested on about 1,100 real cold emails: over 1,000 link-seller and junk pitches received in real inboxes, plus genuine one-to-one pitches from affiliate programs and media buyers. A rule stays only if it helps genuine emails score higher than spam. In our own tests on 1,144 emails from real inboxes, all 55 genuine pitches scored 50 or higher and 54 scored 70 or more, while about 17% of the 1,089 junk emails still scored 70 or more. Where a message uses outside data, such as Hunter's reply-rate benchmark or Belkins' research on email length, the source is named.
Your email is sent to our server only to score it (and to build the PDF report if you ask for one). It is not stored.