Trace Warrior vs MxToolbox

If you've worked in IT operations for more than five years, you've used MxToolbox. It's the elder statesman of free network diagnostic tools, particularly when the problem is email-related. Bounced messages, DKIM failures, "are we on the Spamhaus list again?". You reach for the MX Lookup, the Blacklist check, the SuperTool.

Trace Warrior started as a focused console for live network diagnostics: DNS, TLS, ports, headers, IP geo, encoding utilities. It has since grown a full email deliverability suite, so the overlap with MxToolbox is now much larger than it used to be. Fast page loads, no advertising, optional accounts. Built for engineers who already know what they're looking for.

This page is the honest comparison. Where MxToolbox is the right tool, we'll say so. Where Trace Warrior is the better daily driver, the same. The goal isn't to win the comparison. It's to help you pick the right one for the problem in front of you.

TL;DR

• Trace Warrior now covers email deliverability end to end: a one-click Email Deliverability Test that scores SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX and blacklist status in a single check (the direct answer to MxToolbox's SuperTool), plus a dedicated tool for each. It also wins on everyday diagnostics: faster UI, no ad rail, broader tool set, shareable result URLs.
• MxToolbox still leads for continuous deliverability work: scheduled blacklist monitoring with alerts, far broader RBL coverage (80+ lists), historical trend reporting, and the longer institutional reputation.
• If you need a fast, accurate one-off deliverability check, either works, Trace Warrior is faster and ad-free.
• If you run production email and need always-on sender-reputation monitoring across 80+ blacklists, MxToolbox is still purpose-built for that.
• If both, they're complementary. Bookmark each, route by problem shape.

What changed: Trace Warrior now does email deliverability

The old version of this page conceded the entire email category to MxToolbox. That's no longer accurate. Trace Warrior now ships a complete deliverability suite, all probe-backed from a real London vantage point:

One-click deliverability score

The Email Deliverability Test is our answer to the SuperTool. Enter a domain and it runs SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX and blacklist checks in parallel, then returns a weighted 0-100 score with an A-F grade, each category marked pass, warning, or fail, with a plain-language finding and a link to the full detail. It's the fastest way to see why mail is landing in spam and what to fix first.

And a dedicated tool for each check

• SPF Checker walks every include the way a receiving server does and counts your DNS lookups against the RFC limit of 10, the single most common silent SPF failure, and flags +all, multiple records, and broken includes.
• DKIM Checker doesn't make you know your selector. Leave it blank and it scans 26 selectors the major providers document until it finds yours, then validates the key size and flags revoked or testing keys. MxToolbox asks you for the selector up front.
• DMARC Checker reads your policy with organizational-domain fallback exactly like a real receiver, explains every tag, and verifies that external report destinations are actually authorised to receive your reports, a silent failure most tools skip.
• MX Lookup resolves each mail host to its IPs with reverse DNS, detects your provider, and flags null MX, CNAME targets, and unreachable hosts.
• Blacklist Check queries the major DNSBLs through our own recursive resolver, so Spamhaus and URIBL return real answers instead of the refuse-shared-resolver codes that make other tools show false listings.

And when a specific message misbehaves, the Email Header Analyzer parses its raw headers into the delivery path with per-hop delays and the SPF, DKIM and DMARC results it was actually judged on. MxToolbox has a header analyzer too; ours runs entirely in your browser, the pasted headers are never uploaded.

If your problem is "messages are going to spam and I need to know whether my DMARC is parseable and my IP is clean," that's now a thirty-second answer here.

Where MxToolbox still wins

Blacklist breadth and continuous monitoring

MxToolbox's free blacklist check queries 80+ public RBLs in a single call; we check the dozen or so that matter most. More importantly, the paid Delivery Center adds scheduled blacklist monitoring with email and webhook alerts when your domain or IP appears on a new list. We monitor SSL, DNS, ports, HTTP and ping continuously, but a dedicated blacklist monitor is still on our roadmap, not shipped. If your job description includes the words "sender reputation," MxToolbox is still purpose-built for that always-on surveillance.

Historical data and trend reports

MxToolbox stores the history of every check from a signed-in account, and subscribers see month-over-month trend graphs for response times, blacklist appearances, and authentication failures. Useful for compliance reporting and the inevitable post-incident write-up. Trace Warrior records tool runs against your account but doesn't yet graph them over time.

Institutional trust

If you need to put a tool name in front of a Fortune 500 procurement team, MxToolbox has been around since 2004 and is widely recognised. Trace Warrior is the newer entrant.

Where Trace Warrior wins

Page load and result render speed

Open MxToolbox's SuperTool on a fresh tab. Count the seconds until you can interact with the input field. Between ad scripts, telemetry, and chrome, it's a noticeable wait on a clean network. Now open the Deliverability Test or the DNS lookup: the page is interactive immediately, and results render as soon as the upstream query completes. Run twenty checks a day and the cumulative friction adds up.

No advertising

MxToolbox's free tier is funded by display advertising. That's a fair model, but it means the results page is bracketed by competing-vendor ads, sometimes pitched in a way that's deliberately easy to misread as part of the diagnostic output. Trace Warrior's free tier is funded by paying users and is ad-free at every level.

A broader, day-to-day toolset

Beyond the email suite above, Trace Warrior also covers:

• DNS - DNS Lookup, Domain to IP, CNAME, Nameserver, Reverse DNS, WHOIS
• TLS - SSL Certificate Checker with expiry tracking and SAN inspection
• Connectivity - Port Checker, Ping Test, Traceroute
• HTTP - Header Checker for response headers, security headers, redirects
• IP / geo - Geolocation, ASN Lookup, What's My IP, MAC Address Lookup
• Engineer utilities - Base64, URL encoder, Hash Generator, JSON / YAML Formatter, Subnet Calculator, Cron Job Generator

If the problem at hand is "check this domain's deliverability, then inspect the certificate on its API host, then verify the response headers," all three steps live in the same console.

Shareable result URLs

Trace Warrior tools hydrate from the URL. Running /tools/email-deliverability-test?host=example.com pre-fills and runs the check. Paste a URL into Slack and the recipient sees the same result you did. MxToolbox doesn't currently support this.

Account history without an upsell wall

A free Trace Warrior account stores every tool run against your user record, and tool runs are unlimited even on Free. Paid plans (from $9/month) add monitoring capacity, webhook alerts, and API access. MxToolbox's history features are gated behind the Delivery Center plan.

Feature matrix

Pricing model

MxToolbox is freemium. Free tools are unlimited but ad-supported. Delivery Center is the paid tier that adds monitoring, alerts, and history; pricing is published on their site.

Trace Warrior is tiered SaaS. Free tier: every tool unlimited, full feature access, plus 3 monitors. Starter $9/month: 15 monitors, webhook alerts, status pages. Professional $29/month: 50 monitors, 1-minute checks, API access. Enterprise $99/month: unlimited monitors and dedicated support.

For the customer who needs always-on blacklist monitoring across 80+ lists, MxToolbox Delivery Center is still the fitter buy. For the engineer running one-off deliverability and DNS / TLS / header checks across a workday, our free tier covers it outright: unlimited runs, no ads.

When to use which

You don't have to choose

Plenty of teams use both. MxToolbox runs in the background for always-on blacklist monitoring across the long tail of RBLs; Trace Warrior gets opened when a developer is mid-incident and needs a scored answer in five seconds. Bookmark both, route by problem shape.

Try Trace Warrior

The honest test: run your own domain through the Email Deliverability Test. Thirty seconds, no signup, no ads, and a graded answer for SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX and blacklists in one place. The full tool index is here if you want to browse.

The honest summary has shifted. Trace Warrior now matches MxToolbox for one-off deliverability checks and is faster and ad-free doing it. MxToolbox still leads on continuous, at-scale blacklist monitoring and trend history. Use both if you need both, but you no longer have to leave Trace Warrior to answer "why is my email going to spam?".