So you want to start sending cold emails, you went digging around on Reddit or X or YouTube, and you realized: Oh… this sounds complicated. And expensive. And time-consuming. And, wow, yeah, so expensive.
You’ve been trying to figure out what’s on everyone’s “must-have” shopping list: a stack of secondary domains and inboxes, authentication, warm-up, prospecting, enrichment, validation, an email sending platform, spam testing, maybe more.
At some point I guess you’ll send some emails… but only after you’ve sunk hundreds (or thousands) of dollars and so much of your time into getting started.
But is that really the entry fee to start sending cold emails?
I’ve worked with (quite literally) thousands of cold emailers of all levels — from people who haven’t sent a single message to sales teams at gigantic companies to outreach agencies. Every day I’m also talking about cold email on Reddit, X, YouTube, and various Slack, Facebook, and Discord.
So I know what you actually need as you’re getting started.
In this article, I’ll cover what’s in the “must-have” cold email stack according to the gurus, influencers, and guys (it’s always guys) on X bragging about their success.
And I’ll also cover what you actually need to get started, the right ramp up for a new cold emailer, and ways to cut down on your tools at every stage of the cold email lifecycle.
What You Really Need to Get Started with Cold Email: Table of Contents
- The “Must-Have” Cold Email Stack (According to Social Media)
- So… What Are You Supposed to Spend on Your Cold Email Setup Before You Send a Single Campaign?
- The Alternative: How to Get Started on Cold Email Without the Extremely Costly “Must-Have” Stack
- Ready to Get Started with the Actual Best Cold Email Startup Stack?
- The “Must-Have” Cold Email Stack: Frequently Asked Questions
The “Must-Have” Cold Email Stack (According to Social Media)
Though cold email trends (and tactics) change all the time, for the past few years, this is the general consensus on social media about the “must-have” set of tools.
And you’ll likely feel you really do need ALL of this before you can reasonably get started (or you’ll go straight to spam and get zero replies and be banished back to some other less-desirable moneymaking internet realm like dropshipping or faceless YouTube).
Here’s the list.
Multiple domains
The biggest rule of thumb: Don’t send from your real domain, and don’t send too many cold emails from one domain.
Because if prospects ignore your cold emails or, worse, mark you as spam, it can tank that entire domain’s reputation.
So the advice is to buy separate domains for outreach, anywhere from a handful to dozens. That way if one gets burned, your “real” domain is still fine and you can always just dump it.
Multiple inboxes per domain
You need to set up a handful of inboxes on each domain, so each different email address can send out roughly 30 to 50 cold emails a day.
The goal is to keep the volume down to keep you off Google and Microsoft’s radars as a cold emailer (even though, yes, they know what you’re doing and to date are still allowing it). Also, by keeping emails-per-mailbox down, you limit your spam exposure risk.
These inboxes can be through Google Workspace, Outlook, or the entire niche world of cold email infrastructure services.
Email sending platform
Doing cold email manually is arduous and, at scale, borderline impossible. So you’ll need an email sending platform.
The ones you’ll hear most often from the gurus (though this is changing) are Instantly and Smartlead, both of which have been targeting the hardcore cold email universe for the past four or so years.
There are lots of other options out there — for instance, I haven’t talked to an outreach agency using either of those in months — and many people do hunt for a platform that better fits their needs.
After all, I’m at GMass and we have a minimum of a few hundred cold emailers sign up every day, so I know empirically that people are hunting for alternatives that don’t have some of the downsides of the other picks. (Like less bloat, better cost, better infrastructure, less spam placement, and on and on.)
But if you post “What do I need to get started in cold email” on Reddit, at least one person in the thread will say the Instantly/Smartlead thing.
Warmup
The gurus still push warmup hard. The usual rule of thumb is to warm up each domain/mailbox for a minimum of two weeks but really, the influencers all say you should warm up even longer.
No one actually waits that long (Smartlead admitted their average user can only wait eight days before starting to send), but if you’re trying to do this exactly by the modern playbook, it includes warmup.
Prospecting and enrichment databases and tools
A database like Apollo or Hunter (or the many, many upstarts) supplies the names and email addresses of outreach targets.
Then you’re encouraged to use Clay (or the many, many upstarts) to enrich those contacts so your emails can be better personalized.
Email verification
Bounces can damage your sender reputation. And as much as the prospecting databases try, they’re riddled with dead addresses.
So the rule-of-thumb is to clean and verify every email address before sending. Companies like MillionVerifier, Reoon, and ZeroBounce, among many others, will run various tests on your contact lists to try to weed out as many bad addresses as possible before you send.
Spam testing
So yeah, you bought all of the above. You created a campaign. Now, before you send it, you want to know if you’re going to wind up in spam.
There are lots of placement-testing tools, including third-party options like EmailGuard or upsells at Instantly and Smartlead, which send your email to test inboxes to determine whether it lands in the inbox, promotions, or spam before a campaign goes out.
(GMass’s Spam Solver is another, but it’s included free with plans.)
So… What Are You Supposed to Spend on Your Cold Email Setup Before You Send a Single Campaign?
If you follow the standard advice, here’s what you’re spending before your first campaign. And “spending” doesn’t just mean money…
Note: We benchmarked this off sending to 5,000 contacts in a month at 30 emails per inbox per day and three inboxes per domain. Each would get up to a three-email sequence.
The financial cost
Your upfront cost is a minimum of $360, likely higher, with recurring charges coming in at anywhere from $320 to $450 a month.
Where you land depends on which sending platform you use and which other companies you choose.
Here’s what the bill covers:
- 8 domains: Roughly $90-$120 up front from a registrar such as Porkbun or inside a sending platform like Smartlead or Instantly. That breaks down to ~$7 to $10 a month, but you have to pay annually in advance.
- 23 inboxes: A total of about $100 to $115 per month if you buy cheaper (but less reputable) mailboxes from an infrastructure service or platform like Smartlead or Instantly. Or about $193/month if you buy from Google Workspace.
- 1 sending platform: The costs vary wildly. You’ll need Instantly or Smartlead’s plan that runs $94 to $97/month to handle your volume; at that price you get 90,000 to 125,000 total emails and 25,000 to 30,000 contacts. Other platforms can cost way more or less (for instance, GMass is $59.95 monthly for unlimited emails and contacts.)
- 1 warmup service: Some platforms include warmup. There are also third-party warmup services (though fewer than there used to be as automated warmup has fallen a bit out of fashion), which can add on another cost.
- 1 prospecting service: It will cost about $60 to $150 for prospecting, whether you use third-party service or the add-ons at some of the platforms.
- Email verification: From about $6/month for any of the services.
- Spam testing: Approximately $47-$49 a month for a placement-testing plan that covers 23 inboxes, such as Instantly’s Inbox Placement add-on, Smartlead’s SmartDelivery, or EmailGuard. (Unless you find a platform that includes placement tests.)
Depending on what you choose, this will run you at least $320/month (and that’s with no Google Workspace inboxes and the bare minimums everywhere else) and as much as $450 or more.
The time cost
Before your first campaign, the setup work repeats for every domain and inbox:
- DNS/authentication. For each of the 8 domains: buy it, add the MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, and set up forwarding to your main site. Non-negotiable, very time-consuming.
- Mailbox setup. For each of the 23 inboxes: create it, give it a name and signature (and profile picture if you’re in Google), and connect it to the sending platform and warm-up.
- Open an account with each vendor. As few as 2 if you buy everything inside one platform (the platform and a verifier), or as many as 6 if you buy the pieces separately (registrar, Google, sending platform, contact data, verifier, spam testing).
Another time cost: Once everything is set up, you wait two weeks or more for warmup before a single prospect hears from you.
The Alternative: How to Get Started on Cold Email Without the Extremely Costly “Must-Have” Stack
So, do you actually need to spend all that money and all that time on the stack, dropping hundreds of dollars or more before you send a single campaign?
Absolutely not.
I can’t tell you how relieved new cold emailers are when I tell them that. Sometimes they even argue with me because it’s become so ingrained that it’s “follow all these rules or you’re dead on arrival.”
So here’s how you can (and, I daresay, should) begin with cold email.
Start: one domain, one inbox
It’s optimistic, but illogical, to spend a fortune before you’ve sent a single cold email.
After all, no matter how prepared you think you are, when you actually start sending a campaign you’ll learn more about everything from targeting to prospecting to spam prevention than you could through all the research in the world.
So here’s the real starting stack.
- 1 domain: a .com from any registrar at ~$11/year.
- 1 inbox: one Google Workspace Business Starter inbox on the Flexible plan at $8.40/month. It’s worth paying for Google’s built-in deliverability advantages.
- 1 middle plan on an email sending platform: You don’t need to jump right into the top plan. GMass’s middle tier plan, the Premium plan at $39.95 a month, has unlimited emails, unlimited contacts, sequences, automatic follow-ups, email verification, and Spam Solver all included.
- No warmup service: At a lower volume with a well-curated initial list, I never recommend automated warmup. You can warm up a mailbox by sending to some close contacts (who’ll mark you as “not spam” and reply), or even by sending low volumes to good prospects.
- 1 prospecting service: You can get a plan to match your volume, like Hunter’s $49/month Starter plan.
- Verification/spam testing: If you go with a service that doesn’t include them, buy the minimum plans on these.
Total up front: $110-$175. Total setup time: Very minimal.
And no, this exact stack won’t last forever. But for at least your first few months, as you’re learning and testing and getting traction, it’s the right amount to spend.
Then once you start making more money than you’re spending, you can grow your stack…
Grow: more domains and mailboxes with inbox rotation
You’re ready to expand your operation, sending cold email for yourself and/or for clients.
And now it’s time to implement something closer to the “must-have” playbook; inbox rotation is still the right next step for most people. (Though if you achieve great results right out of the gate and want to graduate to the true expert peak, skip down to the next section on ColdSMTP.)
So now it’s time to grow your stack. Intelligently.
- 7 more domains: .com from any registrar at ~$11/year.
- 22 more inboxes: Google is more expensive than infrastructure services, but the premium you pay brings so many deliverability and credibility advantages that it’s worth it.
- 1 advanced plan on an email sending platform: Now it’s time to make the leap. You can now switch over to one of the Instantlys/Smartleads of the world. Or stay at GMass and switch to the Professional plan at $59.95 a month, which adds inbox rotation called MultiSend, alongside the unlimited emails, unlimited contacts, email verification, and Spam Solver.
- No warmup service: Still not really necessary. You can gradually ramp up each mailbox.
- 1 prospecting service: You’ll need a higher volume plan here. Or, now that you’ve better identified your target customers, you may want to skip the overused databases and do your own LinkedIn or scraping.
- Verification/spam testing: If you go with a service that doesn’t include them, buy the mid-tier or top-tier plans on these.
Total monthly: ~$300-$450, depending. There’s setup time involved, but since you know how to translate your efforts into customers now, it certainly feels more worthwhile.
And really, this setup can continue to work for you indefinitely. Occasionally you’ll need to swap out domains and mailboxes, and you’ll definitely test out different prospecting and enrichment tools — but largely, this operation can scale with you as you keep growing.
There’s just one more level.
True high performers only: Cold email sending server
Once you have a history of campaigns that get good engagement and don’t go to spam, you’re ready for the holy grail: Not having to do the whole inbox rotation thing.
That’s where you may think about investing in your own cold email sending server. Or, in lieu of that (since it’s not easy or cheap), GMass actually offers a service called ColdSMTP.
ColdSMTP is a cold email sending server for high-performing cold emailers only where you can use one domain and one mailbox to send high-volume cold email. It costs $99 a month on top of a paid GMass plan.
ColdSMTP replaces the extra domains and inboxes, along with their DNS setup, warm-up, and upkeep.
This cuts costs way down (no more endless domains and mailboxes). So once you’ve got some good sending history, it’s absolutely worth it to apply.
Ready to Get Started with the Actual Best Cold Email Startup Stack?
The social media consensus always clusters around an extraordinarily costly and time-consuming tool stack for new cold emailers. We’re talking about an outlay of hundreds of dollars and several weeks before you can even send your first campaign.
But having worked with thousands of cold emailers, I can confidently say: You don’t need all that.
You should start with the right-sized stack of just the tools and grow only when you’re ready.
And GMass is a great place to do that growing. It’s not as costly or bloated as a lot of other hardcore cold email platforms, it grows seamlessly as you expand, and even has a cold email sending server when you’ve reached the top of your game.
Plus, GMass works inside of Gmail so it’s a lot less intimidating to get started.
You can try out GMass for free. Just download the Chrome extension and you can send a test campaign today. See why 400,000+ emailers use GMass and give it an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars across 10,000+ reviews.
The “Must-Have” Cold Email Stack: Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need the full recommended cold email stack to start?
No. You can start on one domain, one inbox, and a minimal prospecting plan and add domains, inboxes, and sending capacity as your volume grows.
Some services even bundle the other tools to further save your monthly cost. For example, GMass has both email verification and spam testing included in all plans.
How much does cold email cost per month?
Based on the “must-have” stack recommended on social media, you’ll be laying out somewhere between $320 and $450 a month before you even send a single campaign.
That’s why we always recommend people start smaller and grow proportionally.
How many domains do you need for cold email?
To send to 5,000 contacts a month, you’d need roughly eight domains with three mailboxes each (to stick to the recommended send volumes).
For most people starting out, though, one domain is enough, adding more once results are stable.
Do you need to warm up a new inbox?
Every inbox needs some form of warming up, but not necessarily with automated warmup services.
With automated warmup services, it’s recommended to go at least two weeks.
However, we’ve found that at lower volumes, you can actually warm up domains and mailboxes through sending small batches to your contacts or even to good prospects.
Do you need a separate email verification tool?
You need to verify email addresses to avoid bounces, and generally that means paying for an email verification tool. There are, however, some services like GMass that include email verification.