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Comparison

DomainVigil or MxToolbox?

MxToolbox answers a question you're asking right now: is this domain on a blacklist, what do its MX records say, why isn't this message arriving. DomainVigil asks the same question every hour for a year and speaks up the day the answer changes. That isn't a difference in quality, it's a difference in timing.

Taken from their public site on 12 September 2026: product page and subscription plans. The detail of their monitoring console sits behind a login, and we don't hold a paid account there. Anything we couldn't see is written “not advertised on their public pricing page” — which is not the same as “they don't do it”, and the distinction is worth keeping.

A diagnostic tool and a watch are useful at different moments

MxToolbox's SuperTool is probably the best-known tool of its kind, and for good reason: it's free, it asks for no account, and a single search chains together MX records, DNS, blacklists and an SMTP test. It's the tool you open when a client rings to say their mail is going to junk.

So the question isn't which one is better, but when each one earns its keep. A diagnosis answers when you run it — which still means knowing that it needs running. Between the moment a sending address lands on a blacklist and the moment a client notices, several days usually pass, and that gap is what a watch fills.

Their free plan says it plainly: one domain, one monitor, two blacklist monitors, thirty lists queried, and a weekly check. That's a safety net, not a watch. Their real monitoring offer starts at $129 a month, for five domains, and it's built entirely around email.

The same incident, seen from both sides

On a Friday evening, the sending address of one of your clients lands on a blacklist. Nobody did anything wrong: a badly protected contact form was used as a relay for two hours. Here is what happens next, minute by minute, on each side.

  1. Friday, 9:40 pm

    The address lands on the list

    At MxToolbox

    Nothing happens. The free account checks the lists once a week; their $129 plan advertises adaptive monitoring of sending addresses, which would catch this.

    At DomainVigil

    Nothing either. Our blacklist watch runs once a week on the free plan, once a day on Pro and Agency. At that moment we're no faster than they are.

  2. Saturday morning

    The first message doesn't arrive

    At MxToolbox

    Somebody has to open the SuperTool and type the domain in. The diagnosis is excellent and instant — but you need a reason to run it first.

    At DomainVigil

    On a paid plan the watch has run overnight: the message has already gone out, with the name of the list, the address involved and the link to the delisting page.

  3. Saturday, during the day

    You work out why

    At MxToolbox

    This is where they are strongest, by a distance. Over a hundred lists queried on their paid plans, the reputation of third-party relays, aggregated DMARC reports, delisting help by email and by phone.

    At DomainVigil

    We query seven zones, chosen for their reliability and probed on every run. The copilot gives a likely cause and the steps to follow, but on the depth of email diagnosis we're not in the same league.

  4. Monday

    You check it's fixed

    At MxToolbox

    You run the search again. The result is clear, dated, and easy to forward to the client.

    At DomainVigil

    The watch comes back round on its own and the alert closes itself. The history keeps a record of the incident — 30 days on free, 365 on Agency.

What MxToolbox does better

On email the gap is wide, and it runs their way. We're not trying to close it: it isn't the job we do.

  • Blacklists. Over a hundred lists queried on their paid plans, thirty on the free account. Our watch queries seven, chosen because they still answer their own test entry. On sender reputation alone, they see far wider than we do.
  • Aggregated DMARC reports. They collect the reports mail providers send back, aggregate them and make them readable. We read the DMARC policy published in DNS and know how to correct it; we don't collect the reports that come back.
  • Inbox placement. They test a campaign with the major providers before it goes out and explain why it risks missing the main inbox. We have nothing like it.
  • The SuperTool: free, no account, twenty years behind it. Four of our 9 free tools cover part of what it does; theirs is still more complete on email.
  • Support. Help with delisting, phone support on their top plan, five to ten user accounts included. We answer by email.

What DomainVigil does better

Everything in a domain that isn't email. And the price, which is no detail when you're looking after other people's sites.

  • Everything outside email. Domain name expiry, the certificate, DNS records, site uptime, security headers: none of it appears on their public pricing page, which is built entirely around deliverability.
  • The entry price. Their first paid plan is $129 a month. Ours is $15. For an agency charging a few tens of euros a month per site for maintenance, that gap decides on its own.
  • The number of domains. Five domains on both their paid plans, the $129 one and the $399 one alike. Here, 30 domains at $15 and 150 at $49.
  • The free plan. One domain and one monitor there, 5 domains and seven watches here, with no countdown and no card.
  • An alert that says what to do. The copilot gives the likely cause, the steps to follow and who has to act — the person who receives the alert isn't always the one who can read a DNS record.

How to choose, honestly

Choose MxToolbox if your subject is email. A company sending campaigns, a client whose deliverability is collapsing, a DMARC migration to carry all the way to full reject: they have been doing this for twenty years and nobody on this page replaces them.

Choose DomainVigil if your subject is the domain. You look after sites for clients, you want to know before they do that a name is coming up for renewal, that a certificate is about to expire or that DNS has moved, and you want to know it across thirty or a hundred and fifty domains without spending your Fridays on it.

And keep the SuperTool bookmarked whatever you decide. It's free, it asks for nothing, and the day one of our alerts sends you looking for why an address is listed, that's probably where you'll finish digging.

Try DomainVigil for free

5 domains free, forever. No card required.

Questions people ask us

Does MxToolbox monitor domain or certificate expiry?
It isn't advertised on their public pricing page of 12 September 2026, which details deliverability, blacklists, DMARC, inbox placement and mailflow monitoring. We don't hold a paid account there and we won't pretend to know what their console contains beyond what they publish.
Seven blacklists against a hundred — isn't that a problem?
It is, if deliverability is your trade, and we say so plainly above. Our choice is deliberate: a list that no longer answers its own test entry comes back “clean” when it shouldn't, which is worse than not querying it at all. So we probe the health of every zone on every run and keep seven that hold up. For watching a portfolio of brochure sites, that's enough. For steering millions of outgoing messages, it isn't.
Can you use both?
It's the most natural pairing on this page, because the two scopes barely overlap. DomainVigil tells you something is happening on a domain; the SuperTool tells you what's happening on the mail side, free, no account, in ten seconds.

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