What are the best inbox monitoring tools for Sparkpost and Amazon SES?
Michael Ko
Co-founder & CEO, Suped
Published 28 Jun 2025
Updated 16 Aug 2025
7 min read
Managing email deliverability can be a complex task, especially when you're utilizing multiple sending platforms like SparkPost and Amazon SES. While SparkPost offers a suite of built-in features for monitoring, Amazon SES, known for its cost-effectiveness and scalability, typically provides more basic insights. This often means I need to look for external tools to get a comprehensive view of my inbox placement across both services.
The goal is always to ensure that important emails land in the recipient's inbox, not their spam folder. Without proper monitoring, it's difficult to identify and address issues like bounces, complaints, or blocklist (or blacklist) listings that can severely impact email program performance. Finding the right tools that integrate seamlessly or at least provide actionable data for both SparkPost and Amazon SES is key.
My experience has shown that relying solely on the native reporting from each ESP can leave significant blind spots. For instance, Amazon SES is powerful but requires a more hands-on approach to set up granular monitoring for deliverability events. This is where a third-party inbox monitoring tool becomes invaluable, providing a unified dashboard and deeper insights.
The importance of inbox placement
Understanding inbox placement is crucial because it directly correlates with the effectiveness of my email campaigns, whether transactional or marketing related. If emails consistently land in spam or are blocked, recipients won't see them, leading to missed opportunities and a poor return on investment. This is why having a clear picture of where my emails are landing is essential.
Various factors influence whether an email reaches the inbox, including sender reputation, content quality, and proper email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Even if I'm sending legitimate emails, a poor reputation or misconfigured authentication record can lead to emails being filtered as spam or rejected. Proactive monitoring helps identify these issues before they escalate into major problems.
Regularly checking email deliverability metrics allows me to track trends and quickly respond to any dips in inbox placement. This includes keeping an eye on bounce rates, complaint rates, and engagement metrics like opens and clicks. These indicators provide valuable clues about my sending health and overall sender reputation, guiding me on where to focus my optimization efforts.
Leveraging built-in features for monitoring
Both SparkPost and Amazon SES offer native tools that can help with initial monitoring, but their scope and ease of use differ. SparkPost, in particular, has a strong reputation for its analytics and built-in deliverability features, which can be quite helpful for understanding how emails are performing within its ecosystem.
SparkPost provides robust analytics dashboards that allow tracking of critical metrics such as opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and bounces. Their platform often includes features like engagement tracking and bounce classification. These capabilities offer a good starting point for assessing email performance and identifying immediate issues that might arise directly from their sending infrastructure.
Amazon SES, while highly scalable and cost-effective, is more of a foundational sending service. It provides basic email metrics and allows for bounce and complaint notifications through AWS SNS topics that can be processed by AWS Lambda or SQS. While this setup is powerful for developers, it requires more custom configuration to translate raw data into actionable insights, unlike SparkPost's more user-friendly interface.
SparkPost
Dashboard Analytics: Offers comprehensive dashboards with real-time metrics for opens, clicks, bounces, and complaints.
Bounce Classification: Detailed categorization of bounces to help understand deliverability issues.
Engagement Tracking: Provides insights into recipient engagement, crucial for sender reputation.
Amazon SES
Basic Metrics: Provides delivery, bounce, and complaint rates via the console and CloudWatch.
Event Notifications: Integrates with Amazon SNS to notify on bounces, complaints, and deliveries.
Virtual Deliverability Manager: Offers a centralized view for deliverability insights and recommendations.
Third-party inbox monitoring solutions
While native tools offer a foundational level of monitoring, for a truly comprehensive view, especially when dealing with the more raw data from Amazon SES, external inbox monitoring tools become indispensable. These tools often provide a more holistic perspective by integrating with multiple ESPs and offering advanced features.
Several solutions can fill this gap, offering features like seed list testing, blocklist monitoring (or blacklist monitoring), and detailed inbox placement reports across various ISPs. This helps me understand exactly where my emails are landing, not just if they're delivered. This kind of insight is crucial for maintaining a strong sender reputation.
When choosing a tool, I prioritize those that offer clear, actionable data and can integrate with both SparkPost and Amazon SES. Compatibility is key to avoid fragmented data and ensure I have a single source of truth for my deliverability performance. This makes it much easier to track and resolve email deliverability issues.
I've explored various inbox placement tools and found that some stand out for their comprehensive features and ease of use with multiple sending platforms. Here’s a quick overview of some notable options.
Part of SparkPost's suite, it's designed to provide deeper insights into campaign performance and inboxing, especially useful for those already using SparkPost.
Key features of inbox monitoring tools
When evaluating the best inbox monitoring tool for both SparkPost and Amazon SES, I look for a range of features that go beyond basic delivery statistics. Comprehensive visibility into email performance is crucial for proactive deliverability management. These features help identify potential issues before they significantly impact my campaigns.
One key feature is robust seed list testing, which allows me to send emails to a diverse set of email addresses across major ISPs and receive detailed reports on where they land. This immediate feedback helps me adjust content or sending patterns if I notice emails consistently hitting the spam folder or not arriving at all. Another critical aspect is blocklist monitoring, ensuring my sending IPs or domains haven't been added to any major blocklists, which can instantly tank deliverability. Using a blocklist checker is a must.
Furthermore, I prioritize tools that offer clear reporting on DMARC, SPF, and DKIM authentication statuses. These protocols are fundamental to email security and deliverability, and any misconfiguration can lead to significant inboxing problems. A tool that highlights authentication failures provides actionable insights for immediate resolution. DMARC monitoring, in particular, gives me visibility into how various email providers are treating my emails.
Ensuring optimal email delivery
Monitoring your email deliverability effectively requires more than just checking bounce rates. It involves a proactive approach to maintaining a healthy sender reputation and ensuring your emails are authenticated correctly. Here's a quick checklist of key considerations:
Authentication records: Confirm your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are correctly set up and aligned. Use a DMARC generator to ensure proper syntax.
Segment your lists: Separate transactional emails from marketing emails to protect critical communications.
Regular cleanup: Regularly remove inactive or unengaged subscribers to reduce bounce rates and avoid spam traps.
Monitor feedback loops: Actively process subscriber complaints from ISPs to promptly remove users who mark your emails as spam.
Conclusion
Maintaining optimal email deliverability across multiple sending platforms like SparkPost and Amazon SES requires a strategic and informed approach. While both platforms offer their own set of monitoring tools, a comprehensive third-party solution often provides the deeper, unified insights needed to ensure emails consistently reach the inbox.
By focusing on key features such as seed testing, blocklist monitoring, and authentication reporting, I can gain a holistic understanding of my email program's health. This proactive monitoring allows for swift identification and resolution of issues, safeguarding sender reputation and maximizing the impact of email communications.
Ultimately, the best inbox monitoring tool is one that seamlessly integrates into your workflow, provides actionable insights, and helps you achieve consistent inbox placement, regardless of which ESP you're using.
Views from the trenches
Best practices
Always leverage Amazon SES event notifications (via SNS) to capture bounces and complaints, then process them to maintain list hygiene.
Utilize SparkPost's built-in analytics dashboard for real-time performance insights and to quickly identify engagement trends or dips.
Implement a consistent email authentication strategy across both platforms, including proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records.
Regularly perform seed list testing with a third-party tool to see actual inbox placement across various ISPs and identify filtering issues.
Segment your email lists carefully based on engagement and type of content to optimize sending reputation on both ESPs.
Common pitfalls
Overlooking Amazon SES's lack of comprehensive out-of-the-box deliverability reports, leading to blind spots.
Not integrating bounce and complaint data from Amazon SES into a centralized monitoring system for actionable insights.
Failing to regularly check blacklists (or blocklists) for your sending IPs or domains across both SparkPost and Amazon SES.
Relying solely on one ESP's reporting without cross-referencing with a third-party tool for a holistic view of deliverability.
Neglecting to warm up new sending IPs or domains properly when scaling up volume, particularly with Amazon SES.
Expert tips
Consider a unified deliverability platform that can ingest data from both SparkPost and Amazon SES for a consolidated view.
Focus on maintaining a clean email list, as this is one of the most significant factors influencing inbox placement for both services.
Set up alerts for sudden spikes in bounce or complaint rates to address deliverability issues immediately.
Analyze engagement metrics alongside inbox placement to understand the full picture of how recipients are interacting with your emails.
Regularly review sending practices against industry best standards to stay ahead of ISP filtering changes.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says they use both SparkPost and AWS for their email sending and rely on eDataSource for their inbox monitoring needs, finding it integrates well.
2023-01-23 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks says InboxMonster is a good option and specifically mentions its integration with Amazon SES for comprehensive monitoring.
Amazon SES. While SparkPost offers a suite of built-in features for monitoring, Amazon SES, known for its cost-effectiveness and scalability, typically provides more basic insights. This often means I need to look for external tools to get a comprehensive view of my inbox placement across both services.
Amazon SNS to notify on bounces, complaints, and deliveries.
SparkPost's suite, it's designed to provide deeper insights into campaign performance and inboxing, especially useful for those already using SparkPost.
