Email Deliverability Changes: August 2026

Last updated: August 28, 2026

Deliverability update · August 2026

Email blacklists are changing. One of the two primary blacklist providers, SURBL, has recently become much more aggressive about policing secondary domains. This article summarizes what Unify is changing by default and the steps customers can take to reduce blacklisting risk.

What we have seen

  • In July, the broader go-to-market industry saw mass suspension of secondary domains, including domains that had not yet begun sending. These suspensions appeared to be based on domain creation and sending patterns.

  • At Unify, we replaced impacted secondary domains with new infrastructure.

  • In recent weeks, we have seen two instances of primary domains being blacklisted by SURBL, citing the use of secondary domains as one contributing factor.

  • To date, those primary domains have been successfully removed from the blacklist.

The email deliverability space tends to see large-scale changes every 12–18 months, so Unify is updating defaults and recommendations accordingly.

Changes to Unify defaults

1. No domain forwarding to primary domains

Visitors to secondary domains are no longer redirected to the primary domain by default.

2. No open tracking links by default

Unify will no longer track open rates by default.

3. Bounce protection remains enabled

All emails continue to have bounce protection enabled by default.

Recommended changes to outbound strategy

  1. Avoid linking to your primary website in outbound emails, unless the email is a direct reply.

  2. Enrich lists through Unify to reduce hard bounce rates by 50%+ compared with other enrichment tools.

  3. Shut off scaled sequences with less than 1% reply rates, as low reply rates indicate poor performance and may increase deliverability risk.

  4. Lower sends on primary domains to under 100 per day, down from the current maximum of 150 daily sends.

Can customers change these defaults?

Yes. Customers are free to change these defaults. However, changing them may meaningfully increase the risk of blacklisting secondary domains and, potentially, primary domains.

How Unify is monitoring this

Unify monitors blacklist sites daily and looks for underlying patterns in domains that are blacklisted. We will continue to monitor these changes and share additional learnings in the coming weeks.