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Summary

SpamAssassin, an open-source email filter, assigns a score to emails based on a set of rules, indicating the likelihood of an email being spam. While it was once a prominent tool, its direct impact on email deliverability for major mailbox providers (like Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo) has diminished significantly. Modern spam filtering is far more sophisticated, relying on holistic approaches that prioritize sender reputation, engagement metrics, and behavioral patterns over simple rule-based scoring.

What email marketers say

Many email marketers still encounter SpamAssassin scores through various testing tools and internal reports. While they acknowledge its declining importance for major ISPs, they often use its feedback as a diagnostic signal for potential content issues or to ensure compatibility with smaller or self-hosted mail servers. The general consensus is that a high SpamAssassin score might not directly block emails at large providers, but it can indicate areas for improvement in email content or structure that could inadvertently affect overall sender reputation and engagement metrics.

Marketer view

Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests that a high SpamAssassin score on specific rules, like those related to certain TLDs or subject line formats, does not necessarily mean major mailbox providers will block the email. These rules might be triggered, but most serious providers rely on more comprehensive and holistic filtering methods these days.

22 Jan 2021 - Email Geeks

Marketer view

Marketer from Email on Acid states that understanding your SpamAssassin score is crucial because it ranks the likelihood of an email being spam, with a higher score indicating a greater chance of being marked as junk. While it's an older system, it still helps identify potential red flags in email content and structure. This allows senders to proactively adjust their emails to avoid common pitfalls that could lead to negative filtering decisions.

01 Jan 2023 - Email on Acid

What the experts say

Email deliverability experts agree that while SpamAssassin was historically significant, its role in modern email filtering for major inbox providers has largely diminished. They emphasize that contemporary spam filters are dynamic, adaptive systems that prioritize sender reputation, authentication, engagement signals, and network-level reputation over static rule-based scoring. While SpamAssassin scores can still offer diagnostic clues for specific content issues, they are not the primary determinant of inbox placement. The focus is on a holistic view of email sending health, addressing the root causes of deliverability issues rather than chasing individual SpamAssassin rule fixes.

Expert view

Expert from Spamresource.com emphasizes that modern email filtering is far more sophisticated than simple rule sets like those used by SpamAssassin. Inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook prioritize machine learning algorithms that analyze vast amounts of data, including sender reputation, engagement signals, and historical sending patterns, to determine inbox placement. Relying solely on a SpamAssassin score would be inadequate for today's complex spam landscape.

10 Apr 2024 - Spamresource.com

Expert view

Expert from Wordtothewise.com states that while SpamAssassin provides a score, indicating an email's spam likelihood, it primarily serves as a diagnostic tool for understanding content issues rather than a direct gatekeeper for major inbox providers. These providers have evolved to use dynamic, reputation-based filtering that weighs numerous factors beyond static content rules. Therefore, a low SpamAssassin score is a good sign but not a guarantee of inbox delivery, nor is a high one an automatic block.

15 May 2024 - Wordtothewise.com

What the documentation says

Technical documentation and research often describe SpamAssassin as a collaborative filtering system that uses a variety of tests to identify spam, assigning a score based on the weight of each rule hit. These tests range from header analysis to content pattern matching. While historically significant, documentation from major email service providers and industry bodies increasingly points towards the supremacy of sender reputation, authenticated sending, and user engagement metrics in determining deliverability. SpamAssassin's rules are still valid from a technical perspective for identifying common spam characteristics, but their application in modern, large-scale email filtering systems is often limited to diagnostic or secondary roles.

Technical article

Documentation from Email on Acid details how SpamAssassin calculates a score for each email, which indicates the probability of it being spam. A higher score means a greater likelihood of being classified as junk mail. This score is derived from numerous individual tests run against the email's content and headers. Understanding this scoring mechanism helps senders identify specific elements that might be contributing to poor deliverability.

01 Jan 2023 - Email on Acid

Technical article

Documentation from AutomationSTAR states that each SpamAssassin rule is assigned a specific value, which can be either positive or negative. The filtering process involves running all tests and summing up these values to produce a total score. This total score then determines whether an email is flagged as spam based on a pre-defined threshold. This systematic approach allows for a granular analysis of why an email might be scoring poorly.

01 Oct 2022 - AutomationSTAR

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