Dedicated IP addresses

By default your mail goes out from a shared pool of sending addresses whose reputation is built by everyone sending through it. A dedicated IP is one address used only by you, so the reputation attached to it is entirely yours.

That cuts both ways, which is why this page spends more time on whether you should take one than on how.

Shared or dedicated#

On a shared pool, reputation is already established. A new sender inherits the accumulated standing of the pool rather than starting from nothing, which is usually an advantage. Your individual sending is a small part of the whole, so a bad week on your side is absorbed. So is a bad week on someone else's.

On a dedicated IP, every signal mailbox providers see is yours. Good sending compounds in your favor with nothing diluting it. Poor sending has nothing to hide behind either, and a single bad campaign lands entirely on your own record.

The deciding factor is volume, because reputation is built from patterns and patterns need data.

Why low volume works against you#

A provider judges an address on recent, repeated behavior. If your dedicated IP sends 3,000 emails one week and nothing for a month, each send looks like a fresh event from an address with no established pattern. Intermittent low volume from a dedicated address can be filtered more harshly than the same mail from a well-used shared pool.

Consistency matters as much as the total. A sender doing 60,000 a month in steady weekly campaigns is a better candidate than one doing 100,000 in a single annual burst.

When a dedicated IP is the right call#

• You send at least 50,000 emails a month, reliably, most months.
• You want your sending reputation to be an asset you own and can carry forward.
• Your mail is operationally important enough that being affected by another sender's mistake is unacceptable.
• You already have clean list practices. A dedicated IP amplifies whatever your habits are.

When to stay on the shared pool#

• You send occasionally, seasonally, or in bursts.
• Your monthly volume is comfortably under the threshold.
• Your list hygiene is still improving. Fix that first, because a dedicated IP will make the consequences sharper, not softer.

Getting one#

A dedicated IP is an add-on to any plan, at $29 a month. It includes a warm-up schedule and monitoring, which matter more than the address itself.

Contact us to add one, and expect the change to take effect over weeks rather than immediately, because of the warm-up below.

Warming up is not optional#

A new dedicated IP has no reputation at all, and no reputation is treated closer to bad than to good. Sending your usual volume from it on day one is the single most common way to damage a new address.

The ramp follows the same shape as warming a new domain: start small, send to your most engaged contacts first, roughly double when the signals stay healthy, and never skip ahead because a stage went well. Expect several weeks before you are sending full volume.

The full schedule and the checks to run at each stage are on Warm up a new domain, and the same process applies here.

What to watch after the switch#

For the first couple of months, treat every campaign as a data point rather than a routine send.

• Bounce rate. A rise after switching usually means list problems that the shared pool was masking.
• Complaint rate. This matters more than its small numbers suggest. Watch it closely while the address is young.
• Delivery consistency by provider. If one major mailbox provider starts filtering while others do not, that is a reputation signal specific to them and worth acting on early.

If something goes wrong during warm-up, drop back to the previous stage's volume and hold there rather than pushing on.