There are a multitude of factors that affect email deliverability. The content you send plays its part. The quality of a mailing list is important. Steering clear from spam traps and blacklists can never be underestimated.
One more thing that’s even more important than all of these combined is an impeccable reputation of the IP address you use for sending emails. Together with the quality of your domain, they form Email Sender Reputation – a key factor that’s used to determine whether an email should be allowed into an inbox, end up in a spam folder, or be discarded without a trace.
When it comes to your sending IP, you have two options – a shared or a dedicated IP address. Which one you should choose will depend on a lot of factors. Let’s explore the pros and cons of each approach.
Shared and dedicated IP – what are they?
Each email sent on the internet originates from an IP address (publicly represented by a domain). Each email sending provider (ESP) gives a set of IPs to its users and, using these addresses, distributes emails on their behalf.
Shared IP is a single email address that’s used by more than one sender. Frequently, there could be hundreds or thousands of senders using the very same address, especially on free email services such as Gmail. The performance and habits of each sender affect the performance of others in the same pool.
Dedicated IP is an address that can only be used by a single sender (domain). The entire history of such an address is built, usually from the ground up, by a company using such a service. ESPs offer a dedicated IP as an additional purchase or a plan.
Benefits of using a dedicated IP
Not sharing your IP with a bunch of anonymous senders sure sounds like a good idea. And rightly so – there are certain benefits of having a dedicated IP:
- You’re responsible for your own fate. You’re building your own sending history from the ground up. If you’re doing it well, your delivery rates will likely reflect it.
- You can more easily isolate any issues. When sending from a shared IP, it’s close to impossible to investigate any deliverability issues because of the sheer number of factors. When sending from a private IP, you can pinpoint specific issues and, if possible, address them quickly.
- You can get whitelisted. As a sole sender from a specific IP, you can request for your address to be whitelisted with some ISPs, such as Yahoo!, AOL or MSN and services such as SenderScore or Goodmail. Being whitelisted gives a boost to your deliverability and can help with particular providers. These services typically don’t admit shared IPs.
Benefits of using a shared IP
Sharing IP with other email senders also has its benefits:
- It’s more cost-effective. Without exception, sharing IP with other senders is cheaper than having a dedicated service. It can even be free with a low volume and select providers.
- You can still enjoy a good reputation. If you choose a reputable ESP, it’s not like you’re going to sit on the same IP with hundreds of spammers and phishers and suffer because of them. ESPs do their fair share of the work to ensure that at least a decent quality of emails is sent from their IPs. They monitor hard bounces or complain rates and actively filter out those not meeting their standards
- You benefit from the reputations of others. If you’re just getting started, send a low or inconsistent volume, you would have deliverability issues. But, because you’re sharing IP with more experienced senders, your cumulative volume looks far less suspicious from the outside. As a result, even if you’ve never sent emails with an ESP of your choice, you’ll probably enjoy very decent delivery rates.
To find out more about what is a dedicated email IP, check out the original article on Mailtrap blog.