Understanding Email Deliverability: CareFunnels (Mailgun) vs. Popular Email Platforms

Email deliverability is one of the most misunderstood aspects of digital marketing. Many agency owners assume that using a recognizable platform—like Constant Contact, Mailchimp, or similar tools—automatically ensures better inbox placement.

In reality, deliverability depends far more on your domain setup, sender reputation, and engagement quality than on which software you use. This article explains how CareFunnels manages deliverability, how it compares to traditional email platforms, and what best practices help ensure consistent inbox success.

CareFunnels is built on the HighLevel marketing platform, which uses Mailgun as its enterprise-grade email delivery network.

Mailgun powers over 150,000 businesses globally, including companies like Microsoft, Lyft, and Shopify. It’s engineered for high-volume, performance-critical email—both marketing and transactional—and includes advanced infrastructure designed to protect your sending reputation.

Through this setup, CareFunnels provides:

• Full authentication with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

• Bounce and suppression management for list health

• Optional dedicated IPs for sender control and stability

• Real-time analytics and engagement tracking

In short, CareFunnels gives home care agencies access to enterprise-level email delivery infrastructure that’s normally reserved for major SaaS and technology companies.

Platforms like Constant Contact, Mailchimp, or similar tools are built for ease of use. They’re great for small business owners who need a simple way to send newsletters or promotional messages.

However, these tools operate on shared sending networks, meaning thousands of unrelated businesses share the same IP addresses. This structure makes deliverability partially dependent on the behavior of others using the same servers.

While these platforms do allow you to send from your own domain and set up basic authentication (such as DKIM), the actual email still travels through their shared infrastructure, limiting visibility and control.

This model is perfectly fine for low-volume campaigns, but it doesn’t offer the same level of oversight or consistency that professional marketing systems—like CareFunnels—are designed to deliver.

There’s a critical difference between sending from your domain and owning your deliverability.

• With most general email platforms (like Mailchimp or Constant Contact), your emails appear to come from your domain (e.g., info@youragency.com), but they’re actually delivered through the platform’s shared network.

• With CareFunnels, your emails are sent directly from your own authenticated domain and IP, allowing you to build, maintain, and protect your sender reputation over time.

Owning your deliverability provides:

• Greater inbox placement reliability

• Long-term protection for your domain authority

• Control over how your brand’s emails are perceived by major providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo

For agencies that rely heavily on email for lead nurturing, caregiver recruiting, and family communication, this ownership is essential.

For agencies that send higher email volumes, CareFunnels offers dedicated IP addresses through Mailgun.

A dedicated IP means your agency’s emails are completely isolated from other senders. You’re not sharing reputation with anyone else, and your inbox placement is based solely on your sending practices.

Dedicated IPs are ideal for:

• Multi-location or franchise home care agencies

• Agencies sending over 50,000 emails per week

• Teams running multiple automated sequences or campaigns

These IPs need to be properly “warmed up” by gradually increasing send volume, which helps establish positive reputation signals with inbox providers.

Regardless of which system you use, deliverability success always comes down to technical setup and responsible sending.

To maintain excellent inbox performance, Home Care Marketing Pros recommends the following best practices:

• Authenticate every domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC

• Use a dedicated subdomain (e.g., mail.youragency.com) for marketing email

• Warm up new IPs and domains slowly before increasing send volume

• Keep lists clean by regularly removing unengaged or inactive contacts

• Focus on value-driven, relevant content that encourages engagement

• Monitor open and click rates and adjust frequency to maintain reputation

Following these steps helps ensure your emails reach your audience consistently, no matter which platform delivers them.

To illustrate the key differences, here’s how Constant Contact, one of the most common small-business email tools, compares directly with CareFunnels (Mailgun):

This comparison highlights how CareFunnels prioritizes deliverability ownership, scalability, and integration—critical factors for professional-level home care marketing.

While popular email platforms like Constant Contact or Mailchimp are excellent for small-scale newsletters, CareFunnels is designed for professional agencies that need enterprise-grade deliverability, automation, and control.

With proper authentication and responsible sending practices, CareFunnels can meet or exceed the inbox placement rates of traditional email tools—while giving you:

• Full control over your sender reputation

• Stronger domain authority and brand protection

• Deep CRM and automation integration for efficiency and scalability

At Home Care Marketing Pros, we handle all technical setup and authentication for CareFunnels users to ensure your agency benefits from maximum deliverability, visibility, and lead generation performance.