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Free Link Checker

Validate every link in your email template — catch broken URLs, redirects, and soft 404s before you hit send.

All hyperlinks are extracted and checked automatically.

What This Tool Checks ​

Paste your HTML email template, and the checker extracts every <a href> link (skipping anchor links and mailto: addresses) and tests each one:

  • Working: the link resolves normally.
  • Broken: the request fails outright, a dead domain, connection error, or similar.
  • Error: the server returned an error status.
  • Redirect: the link forwards to a different URL than the one in your template.
  • Soft 404: the link returns a success status but the page served back is actually the site's homepage rather than the requested page, a sign the specific URL no longer exists even though the domain does.

How to Use It ​

  1. Paste your full HTML email template into the text box.
  2. Click Check N links, where N is however many links were found in your markup.
  3. Review the summary counts across working, broken, error, redirect, and soft 404.
  4. Click any link in the results to see its live page preview and, for broken or error links, the surrounding HTML where that link appears in your template.

Why Soft 404s Matter ​

A soft 404 is a link that technically "works", the server responds with a 200 OK, but instead of the page you linked to, it silently serves up the site's homepage. This happens when a site removes a page but doesn't configure a proper redirect or 404 response, so any broken URL under that domain just falls through to the homepage. Basic link checkers that only check HTTP status codes miss these entirely, since nothing about the response looks broken. This tool loads the actual destination page and compares it against what was requested, catching links that would otherwise pass a status check and still send your recipients to the wrong place.

Frequently Asked Questions ​

Does this tool check plain text emails? ​

No. It parses HTML and looks for <a href="..."> tags, so it only works with HTML email templates, not plain text.

Anchor links (#section) and mailto: addresses are intentionally excluded since they aren't external URLs to test.

What counts as a redirect, and is that bad? ​

A redirect means the link sends visitors to a different URL than what's written in your template. This isn't necessarily an error, tracked links and shortened URLs redirect by design, but it's worth confirming the final destination is the one you intended.

The checker fetches each URL the way a normal visitor would, so pages that require authentication will likely show as broken, an error, or a soft 404 depending on how the page responds, even though the link itself may be correct for logged-in recipients.