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FeatureTracking Accuracy

Confidence scoring on every email open

Raw email open rates stopped meaning much. Apple Mail Privacy Protection fetches the tracking image on Apple's servers when an email arrives, whether or not anyone reads it. Corporate security gateways such as Microsoft Defender, Mimecast and Proofpoint check links and images before people see them. Gmail's image proxy can fetch one image several times for a single read. A raw open rate can sit far above the number of people who read.

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Outsolvi grades every open when it arrives: verified, most-likely human, possibly human, Apple Mail, machine preview or scanner, and your own opens are set aside too. Only verified and most-likely human opens count. Each open shows its grade and a reason in plain words, such as "opened in Gmail" or "Microsoft Defender security scan", so you can check the grading yourself.

Who this is for

Email open confidence scoring is for AEs and sales-ops leads who have noticed that their tracker's open rate doesn't match reality, and who want Apple Mail and scanner noise kept out of the count.

The ladder, running

Six events. The ladder counted three.

Every event is graded before it becomes a number. Watch the machines get set aside.

Every event this email received
    Counted: 0 opensSet aside as machines: 0

    What it does

    Grades each open by who fetched the tracking image, what software asked for it, when it arrived relative to delivery and what happened next. The grade and its reason appear on the email's timeline in Outsolvi. Your open count includes only the opens graded as a person, and everything else stays visible with the reason it was set aside.

    Why it matters in 2026

    01

    Apple Mail accounted for 62 percent of the opens Litmus measured in July 2026, and Litmus says studies put Mail Privacy Protection at 55 to 60 percent of all opens. With it on, Apple Mail fetches the image whether or not anyone reads.

    02

    Security gateways check links and images on company mail before anyone opens it. At large corporate domains, Omnivery found 80 to 95 percent of clicks came from bots.

    03

    Without grading, a follow-up plan built on opens is built partly on machines.

    04

    A reason you can read is worth more than a score you have to take on trust.

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    Open grading is not a setting you configure.

    Install on Outlook or Gmail and every open on the next email you send is graded. 14 days free, no card.

    2-minute setupNo credit cardFrom $7/mo yearly · $12/mo monthly

    How it works

    Outsolvi checks who fetched the image: Apple's published relay addresses mean Mail Privacy Protection, Google's and Yahoo's image proxies mean someone opened the message, and Microsoft's cloud in the ten minutes after delivery means a Defender scan. It checks the software: known scanners, scripts and HTTP libraries are set aside. It checks timing: an open faster than any person could manage, or more than ten opens from one address inside a minute, is a scanner. It checks what happened next: a reply upgrades an open to verified, and an Apple Mail open counts once the same reader clicks or replies. And it checks whether the open was yours. Each grade carries a fixed score: verified 100, most-likely human 70, possibly human 20, and 0 for machines and your own opens. Anything at 25 or above counts. There's no single accuracy figure, and we'd rather say so than invent one. Instead, a weekly job checks each rule against replies, clicks and user corrections over the last 30 days, and a rule without enough feedback reports nothing.

    How competitors handle this

    Some trackers filter machine opens behind the scenes: Yesware says it filters proxy and security-scanner opens, and HubSpot says it excludes bot activity. Others say plainly they can't tell, including Boomerang. Outsolvi's difference is that it shows its working: every open carries a grade and the reason for it.

    Use cases for Graded Opens

    Deciding whom to follow up with when half the opens on a list came from Apple Mail
    Explaining to a manager why the open rate dropped after switching trackers
    Checking a surprising open: was it the prospect, or their company's scanner?
    Reading a proposal's opens knowing which ones were people

    Frequently asked questions

    How accurate is the confidence scoring?+

    There's no single accuracy figure, and we'd rather say so than invent one. What runs is a weekly check of every rule: how often a reply, a click or a user confirmed it against how often a user overrode it, over a rolling 30 days. A rule with too little feedback reports nothing rather than a guess. Note what that can't tell you: it measures the rules against corrections people actually make, so a user who never reports a misgrade is invisible to it.

    What decides whether an open counts?+

    Each grade carries a fixed score: verified 100, most-likely human 70, possibly human 20, and 0 for machines and your own opens. Anything at 25 or above counts, so verified and most-likely human opens are counted and the rest aren't. The floor isn't a setting. It's the same for everyone.

    Do other trackers filter machine opens?+

    Some do, behind the scenes. Yesware says it filters proxy and security-scanner opens, and HubSpot says it excludes bot activity. Others say they can't tell machines from people, including Boomerang. What's less common is showing the grade and the reason for every single open, which is what Outsolvi does.

    Does confidence scoring work on Outlook and Gmail equally?+

    Yes. The grading runs on the open itself, whichever app sent the email and whichever app the recipient reads it in. Apple Mail Privacy Protection depends on the recipient's mail app, and security scanners are most common on company mail such as Microsoft 365.

    Will my reported open rate go down if I switch to Outsolvi?+

    Yes, most of all on Apple-heavy or scanner-heavy B2B lists. The drop is noise leaving the data, not real engagement disappearing. Reply rate is the cleaner side-by-side signal during a switch: if reply rate held while open rate dropped, the previous tool was counting machines.

    Can I see the grade for individual opens?+

    Yes. Every open on a tracked email shows its grade and reason. Choose Diagnose on an open to see the rule that fired and what Outsolvi saw: the time after send, the network, the browser signature, and how often that rule has been right lately.

    Try Graded Opens for free

    14-day free trial, no credit card, up to 250 tracked emails. Graded Opens is included, so you can test it on your own email before you pay anything.

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    Nate SummersCo-Founder, Outsolvi

    Nate built Outsolvi after watching every email-tracking tool he had ever used lie to him about opens. Outsolvi grades every open as a person or a machine, in Outlook and Gmail, so the number on the dashboard is one a rep can actually act on.

    Last reviewed September 22, 2026Editorially independent

    We update these pages when the underlying mechanics change. new mailbox-provider rules, new tracker behavior, new measurement gaps. The dates above are real revisions, not auto-touches.

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