In most cases, you\u2019ll use a cold email infrastructure service to spin up several \u2014 I\u2019m talking dozens of or potentially hundreds of \u2014 email accounts fast.<\/p>\n
The goals here are scalability, flexibility, cost savings, time savings, and, above all else, deliverability<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Are those also the outcomes?<\/p>\n Well\u2026 sometimes.<\/p>\n In this article, I\u2019ll cover exactly what these cold infrastructure services are<\/strong>, what they do<\/strong>, and the pros and cons<\/strong>\u00a0of using them.<\/p>\n And after testing about a dozen or so of them, I\u2019ll also share some quick recommendations<\/strong>\u00a0for services you can try yourself.<\/p>\n Cold email infrastructure services are specialized setups that can help outreach pros send out high volumes of messages while circumventing the major email platforms along the way (and circumventing their less-than-generous policies and sentiment toward cold emailers).<\/p>\n Really, these services are creating their own<\/em>\u00a0email platform \u2014 like a private version of Google Workspace or Outlook 365.<\/p>\n But these services don\u2019t stop at just offering a technical email backend. They also do quite a bit more.<\/p>\n As seen in my beautiful illustration above of how this all works, here are the features you\u2019ll find at (virtually) all of the cold email infrastructure services:<\/p>\n The three main reasons you might want to use a private cold outreach infrastructure service are:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a more in-depth look at the \u201cwhy\u201d and \u201chow\u201d of each of those reasons.<\/p>\n Deliverability<\/strong>\u00a0is the biggest reason; it\u2019s why these cold email infrastructure services even exist.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re having trouble<\/strong>\u00a0using Gmail\/Google Workspace and Outlook\/Office 365 to send your campaigns \u2014 with your accounts quickly and frequently banned by the email providers or burned as spam \u2014 this is an alternative.<\/p>\n The hope here is that by freeing yourself from Google and Microsoft and having your own sending server and IP addresses you can achieve better deliverability.<\/p>\n Also, the hope is you won\u2019t be playing an endless game of Whac-A-Mole where you\u2019re eternally setting up and warming up new domains and emails because the major email providers keep shutting yours down.<\/p>\n BUT\u2026 the deliverability challenge is a double-edged sword<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Google (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Microsoft) have some of the highest deliverability email servers in the world.<\/p>\n So if you\u2019re struggling with your deliverability on those<\/em>\u00a0servers, then my friend, it\u2019s gonna be an uphill climb for you to get your messages through on less established and less reputable servers.<\/p>\n With a private email service, you have control over more steps of the email sending process<\/strong>.<\/p>\n You control your own IP reputation<\/strong>; this isn\u2019t Google where you\u2019re sharing that IP with countless other users. It\u2019s possible to even control how you\u2019re rotating IP addresses to keep any one address from bearing too much of the sending burden.<\/p>\n You can set up the authentication protocols exactly how you want them.<\/p>\n You can have more mailboxes for a significantly lower cost<\/strong>\u00a0than on Google Workspace or Outlook (and without needing to authenticate each one with a phone number).<\/p>\n And you don\u2019t have to worry about getting flagged by your sending<\/em>\u00a0platform, just the receiving platforms. Because the cold email infrastructure services have cold emailer-friendly terms of use<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 a major contrast to the terms at the other guys.<\/p>\n Of course, with that flexibility can come more of a technical lift. Private cold email infrastructure services aren\u2019t quite as beginner-friendly \u201coff the shelf\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0as using Gmail or Outlook addresses.<\/p>\n But if you\u2019re technically-minded, you may really gravitate toward the fine-tuning you can do with private infrastructure.<\/p>\n Google and Microsoft put limits on how many emails you can send.<\/p>\n You can get around that with inbox rotation, but that makes it both expensive and time-consuming to get to the email volumes you want to send.<\/p>\n It\u2019s expensive<\/strong>\u00a0because you have to pay for your domains and all your email accounts<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s time-consuming<\/strong>\u00a0because you have to set up each account<\/strong>, configure it at your email sending platform, set up its authentication protocols, warm it up, and then manually monitor how it\u2019s delivering.<\/p>\n Ideally, cold email infrastructure services eliminate a lot of the financial cost <\/strong>and<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0time cost<\/strong>. Mailboxes should be a lot cheaper, if not included.<\/p>\n And setup should be a lot faster across the board; most of these services will handle various parts of the setup process for you<\/strong>\u00a0including domain registration, mailbox setup, and authentication.<\/p>\n Though some services do have some overlap, email sending platforms and email infrastructure services do different things<\/strong>.<\/p>\n To make an imperfect but pretty close analogy, sending platforms are the front end and infrastructure services are the back end<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Email sending platforms are places to create and manage email campaigns. They generally send through Google or Outlook (though you can bring in your own servers if you want).<\/p>\n Email infrastructure services are places to set up what\u2019s going on behind the scenes of sending: Servers, IPs, and accounts.<\/p>\n Most cold emailers who use an infrastructure service will then incorporate it into an email sending platform<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The one, and basically only, answer is deliverability<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Sure, there are other downsides.<\/p>\n It\u2019s adding another cost to your stack \u2014 and usually a pretty significant cost. It\u2019s another vendor to manage. It\u2019s another system to learn. There\u2019s technical setup work involved.<\/p>\n But ultimately, private cold email infrastructure services were built because of the endless deliverability problem in outreach<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 and they\u2019re only worthwhile if they do, in fact, solve that problem.<\/p>\n Do they?<\/p>\n Clearly some<\/em>\u00a0people find they do. There are enough of these services having enough success that we know lots of outreach pros are benefitting from them.<\/p>\n However, whenever you see these services discussed on Reddit, Slack groups, Facebook groups, and other cold email forums, you\u2019ll see a swarm of people saying their deliverability is even worse<\/em>\u00a0than Google\u2019s or Outlook\u2019s.<\/p>\n Deliverability is extremely challenging<\/strong>. You should be confident that a service has a real plan and approach to deliverability before you move your entire operation over to them.<\/p>\n Now that we\u2019ve covered what they do and their pros and cons, let\u2019s cover the services themselves.<\/p>\n Here are the three biggest things to consider when you\u2019re choosing a private cold email infrastructure service.<\/p>\n I tested 11 different cold email infrastructure services for this article (as well as an upcoming article with more in-depth reviews).<\/p>\n These are the five I\u2019d recommend trying.<\/p>\n As you\u2019ve seen through this article, I haven\u2019t given a wholehearted endorsement to cold email infrastructure services.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a reason for that.<\/p>\n While these services do<\/em>\u00a0attempt to rectify the deliverability woes of the cold email community, they aren\u2019t <\/strong>exactly<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0what the cold email world wants<\/strong>.<\/p>\n What it really wants<\/em>\u00a0is to be able to send through Google, as the most reputable email provider, without having to try endless tricks and tactics<\/strong>\u00a0to avoid going to spam and burning domains.<\/p>\n Which is why here at GMass, our goal is not to add a huge extra expense to your cold email<\/a> setup. Instead, we believe you can operate inside Gmail and have great success with cold outreach deliverability<\/strong>.<\/p>\n After all, we have (literally) tens of thousands of cold emailers who are achieving that.<\/p>\n How do we do it?<\/p>\n We send through the Gmail API<\/strong>, thanks to Google approving us for that. (Virtually all the other cold email services have to use the less-reliable IMAP.)<\/p>\n We offer easy inbox rotation<\/a><\/strong>. If you want to take it one step further, we also enable you to connect multiple SMTP servers<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to your account to rotate between those for your campaigns.<\/p>\nCold Email Infrastructure Services: Table of Contents<\/h2>\n
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What Is a Cold Email Infrastructure Service?<\/h2>\n
The 7 features all cold email infrastructure services offer<\/h3>\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/infrastructure-howitworks2-tinified.png\")
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Other features you might find at a sending service<\/h3>\n
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Why Would I Want to Use a Private Cold Email Infrastructure Provider?<\/h2>\n
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1. Deliverability<\/h3>\n
2. Flexibility<\/h3>\n
3. Scalability\/Cost<\/h3>\n
Why do I need this if I\u2019m already using an email sending platform for cold email?<\/h3>\n
What are the downsides of using private cold email infrastructure?<\/h3>\n
Choosing a Cold Email Infrastructure Service<\/h2>\n
What are the most important factors to consider when choosing a private cold email infrastructure service?<\/h3>\n
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5 Recommended Cold Email Infrastructure Services<\/h3>\n
![\"Some](\"https:\/\/www.gmass.co\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/infrastructure-offerings.png\")
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The Alternative to Cold Email Infrastructure Services: Inbox Rotation and SMTP Rotation<\/h2>\n