The pros and cons of having your own dedicated IP for your email sending.

In the world of getting an email to the inbox, the IP address is a key player. But it’s not the IP itself, rather it’s the historical sending reputation linked to a specific IP.  

Large email players like Google, Office 365 and Yahoo all have their own ways of monitoring the mail that comes from a specific IP address. Some of the actions they monitor are:  

1. Does the email get opened? 
2. Does the email get quickly deleted? 
3. Does an unsubscribe happen? 
4. Does the recipient click on a link? 
5. Does the recipient click the “spam” button in their email system? 
6. Is the IP listed on any reputable spam blacklist monitoring services (EG: SpamHaus) 

And many finer detailed and nuanced interactions…  

Based on the behaviours exhibited by your recipients, the email provider can take a very educated guess as to how much people want to get your mail, contributing to the reputation.  

If you already have an IP, you can check its reputation on SenderScore. The score is given out of 100 and the closer to 100 the better.  

The reputation of your IP also determines how quickly you can deliver email to the email provider. If you have many Gmail recipients, it’s important to know your email will get to the recipient at the correct time, and having a poor reputation might delay the delivery of your emails. 

When deciding on going with a dedicated IP address versus a shared IP pool that your ESP provides, the bottom line will come down to reputation: do you want to share, or manage on your own?

Pros: 

• You are on your own and managing your own reputation. If you have a fully opted-in database and the recipients engage with your email, then you are in a good space to manage it on your own. 
• When using shared IPs, you share the reputation of all the other customers using the shared IP. Having your own IP eliminates the risks from other senders.  
• You can build up and maintain your own reputation. 
• Lower costs as ESPs generally don’t charge for using their shared IP set.  

Cons:

• When getting started with a dedicated IP, it might take some time to “warm” it up. This means that getting to the inbox might not happen. Your ESP should ideally give you a warm IP to start with. 
• The Speed of delivery will be slow at first and improve as your reputation improves. 
• The impact of spam traps or complaints from your lists is higher. If you have a subscribe form out there that’s not double opt-in or protected by re-captcha, you run the risk of someone putting a spam trap onto your database.  
• Generally, with shared IPs the ESP will manage blacklistings and reputation, when it comes to having your own IP, then you would need to manage your own delisting on public blacklisting services. 
• Usually comes at a fee to have your own dedicated IP.

If you are a good sender, have clean data and the list is protected from spam-traps and bad email addresses then having your own IP address is a net positive. The pros outweigh the negatives.  

If you feel your delivery is being affected by your ESP’s shared infrastructure, feel free to reach out and we can do some testing, warming up and reputation management to determine if this is the case. Often a dedicated IP in this situation will solve many problems.  

Reach out to solutions@touchbasepro.com to chat about dedicated IPs and if you should get yourself one.