Success in cold email outreach hinges on three things: pristine deliverability, reply-worthy copy, and the ability to scale sending volume. If writing compelling emails isn’t your strong suit, AI can help you craft better messaging. Need to scale volume? Just grab a few alternate domains.
But what about deliverability? There are always strategies for reducing bounce rates and improving inbox placement. The problem is that if you’re using providers like Google or Microsoft, you have zero control over your sender’s IP reputation.
That’s because these platforms assign shared sending IPs to all users. Unfortunately, those IPs are often abused. Spammers, phishers, and other bad actors use them too. When their reputation drops, so does yours, even if you’re playing by the rules.
If you want full control over your email deliverability, your best move is to get a dedicated IP address. But what exactly is that? When should you use one? And are they worth it for cold email outreach?
What is a Dedicated IP Address?
A dedicated IP address is an IP address that is yours and yours alone. Think of it as your own private email-sending lane. Since you’re the only one using it, your sender's reputation and email deliverability are entirely in your hands. This offers a ton of flexibility and control in every cold outreach campaign.
The Benefits of a Dedicated IP Address for Cold Outreach
The best offer in the world won’t mean much if it doesn’t reach your prospects’ inboxes. Having a dedicated IP helps ensure your emails do. It does so by providing the following benefits:
Full Control Over Your Sender Reputation
Let’s assume you send 500 cold emails daily and keep your spam complaints under 0.1%. Over time, inbox providers like Gmail and Outlook start trusting your dedicated IP because of consistent, healthy behavior. With a shared IP, you’d never have that level of control—you’d be tied to other senders’ actions.
Improved Deliverability Over Time
Cold outreach is a long game. The better your IP reputation, the higher the chance your emails land in the primary inbox, not spam or promotions. A dedicated IP gives you a chance to build and nurture a domain reputation gradually. Once warmed up, email providers like Google will see it as a trusted source.
Scalability Without Limits
With shared IPs, sending platforms often enforce rate limits to avoid overwhelming the IP or tripping spam filters. This limits how fast you can grow. A dedicated IP removes that bottleneck. You set your own sending pace, which is especially important if you're running multi-seat outreach campaigns or handling a high volume of leads.
Consistent Inboxing Behavior
Inbox providers look at IP behavior patterns: when emails are sent, how many are sent, and how recipients engage. With shared IPs, these patterns are inconsistent because multiple users are sending on different schedules and with different qualities.
Dedicated IPs create a single, predictable sending fingerprint. That helps email filters understand and trust your sending habits better than if it was sent through a shared IP.
Less Risk of Sudden Blacklisting
Shared IPs are frequently monitored and often targeted by blacklists. If someone misuses the IP and it gets flagged, everyone on it pays the price. With a dedicated IP, you’re isolated. If you follow standard operating procedures, your chances of hitting blacklists drop significantly.
And if your IP does get flagged (say, due to a mistake or an unverified email list), you can trace it back to your own activity and fix it fast without waiting for a platform to clean things up.
Reputation Building Across Multiple Domains
Using multiple alternate domains for outreach is the best way to scale sending volume safely. A dedicated IP can anchor them all to a single, trustworthy sending source. As long as the domains are authenticated (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and rotated properly.
When NOT to Use a Dedicated IP Address?
Every email marketer wants the benefits that come with owning a dedicated IP address. However, this type of setup won’t work for every business and cold outreach model. So, here’s when you should NOT use a dedicated IP address:
If You’re Just Starting Out with Cold Email Marketing
When you find the right cold email strategy, scaling is as easy as adding more leads and domains. But that requires A LOT of A/B testing. Would you rather make mistakes in small campaigns where you send less than 250 emails/day or in one where you send 25,000?
You Have a Low Sending Volume
Dedicated IPs work best when they’re sending consistently high volumes, because that’s how they build and maintain sender reputation. Think about it from an email provider’s perspective. Why would they trust “cold” IPs?
If you’re only sending 100-300 emails/day, your dedicated IP won’t have enough activity to look legit. To simplify: low volume = cold IP = suspicious in the eyes of Gmail, Outlook, or Ymail. And you can’t just scale sending volume. You’ll need more alternate domains, and costs stack fast.
Dedicated IP + Domain + Inbox + Maintenance Costs
Running a cold email infrastructure on a dedicated IP is expensive. If you don’t have the resources, this might not be the best choice for scalability. You have to consider the cost of the dedicated IP, the alternative domains, inboxes, and maintenance. Let’s do some quick math.
Say you want to send 500,000 emails monthly. Here’s what you would need:
- Mailgun Scale Plan (500k/emails and 1 dedicated server): $400/month
- Additional dedicated IP addresses: $59/month
- 128 alternate domains: $1,536/year
- 384 inboxes: $576/month
The total monthly recurring costs would be $1,185/month, with the startup costs being $1,536.
Best Alternative to Dedicated IP Addresses for Cold Email
Dedicated IPs are a no-brainer if you’re looking to scale campaigns and want full deliverability control. However, costs aren’t the only thing to consider when building infrastructure that supports high sending volume.
You must know how to authenticate and warm up hundreds of domains, optimize inbox rotations, hosting, deliverability monitoring, list sanitation, and other variables. If you want something plug-and-play, Instantly offers the SISR (Server & IP Sharding and Rotation) system.
There’s no need to set up the infrastructure and warmups yourself—Instantly handles everything for you. The SISR system will automatically assign you a dedicated IP server. It also blocks flagged IPs immediately and swaps them out for another to maintain high deliverability.
Key Takeaways
A dedicated IP address gives full control of deliverability. However, with the maintenance costs and complicated setups, a dedicated IP might not be for everybody. If you’re already scaling and want an easier way of sending high volumes of emails, try Instantly’s SISR system.
It’s available for the Lightspeed plan and lets you send 500,000 emails monthly. Start scaling your cold outreach campaigns with Instantly today!
