Choosing the Best Mailbox Solution for Scalable Cold Email Outreach

If you're currently comparing different solutions to create mailboxes for cold outreach, then this video will give you

all the answers that you're looking for. We're going to be looking at the only four components and factors that really

matter when choosing a provider. And we're going to be mapping out the entire market and compare and rank every choice

so that you can make the best decision for your specific situation. Now, I want to be transparent. One of those choices

is going to be Mailcale, which is a tool that I co-ounded. But you absolutely don't need to use us. In fact, in this

video, I point out when it makes sense and when it doesn't. The goal of this video is for you to have perfect clarity

in the end so that you can make a decision that feels right in your situation. Without further ado, let's

get started. The only four components that really matter are ease of setup, costs, deliverability and support, and

reliability. In order to easily scale your cold email outreach, you want mailboxes that are easy and ideally

automated to set up, that don't break the bank, especially at scale, that deliver well, and that won't get

blocked. When you want to send cold emails at scale, you want to buy secondary domains that sound similar to

your main domain and set up mailboxes underneath. You can send emails at scale with free Gmail accounts, for example.

You need professional email inboxes that are attached to your domain. There are three major categories to choose from

when it comes to mailboxes for cold email outreach. The first one are manual Google Workspace and Microsoft Outlook

accounts. The second category are Google or Outlook resellers. And the third category is dedicated cold email

infrastructure. We actually pioneered this segment a year and a half ago and became the most popular choice with

Mailcale. When it comes to manual Google and Outlook accounts, the ease of setup is pretty much zero. You need to buy

domains separately with providers like NameCheep or GoDaddy. Set up all the DNS records that you need to land in the

inbox such as the DKM, the Dmark, the SPF records, and then you have to set up the mailboxes one by one manually, which

can easily take like 10 to 15 minutes per mailbox. So, you're looking at spending a couple of hours there. In

terms of costs, we're looking at a 1 out of 10 because it costs around $7 a month per mailbox. I found that most people

like to set up around 50 mailboxes in total, which is just the right amount to contact 5 to 10,000 prospects a month.

So, that would be almost $400 a month just for the mailboxes and hours to set them up. In terms of deliverability and

support, this option gets an 8 out of 10, I'd say. Overall, deliverability is great because Google and Outlook are

trusted senders, but there's obviously no support. Quite the opposite. You're kind of lucky if they don't shut you

down for cold emailing. Reliability-wise, I'd give it a five out of 10. Usually, nothing happens, but

cold emailing is against Google and Outlook's policies, so accounts can and will get shut down sometimes, and you

get that notification where your accounts have been blocked. The next option are Google and Microsoft

resetters. Now, in comparison to the manual setup, ease of setup here is around 7 out of 10. These providers will

do some sort of agency service where you fill out a form and then they deliver the inboxes within a couple of days,

configuring them all for you. Pricing wise, we're looking at five out of 10 points with inboxes that go as low as $2

to $3 per month usually. In terms of deliverability and support, I'd give it a 7 out of 10 because there's no

dedicated deliverability support. If your emails don't land in the inbox, which can happen all the time, you might

need to stop using links or avoid certain new spam words, but no one will proactively help you. Reliability wise,

I've got to give this one a three out of 10 points. You have pretty much no control or ownership over your assets.

And a lot of these providers use dodgy loopholes, edu panels, or foreign accounts to resell them cheap. Some even

set up fake universities in Vietnam to get a Google Workspace University license to resell them. So be aware. And

lastly, dedicated cold email infrastructure. It's kind of crazy to think that we were among the first to

create the segment from scratch. So what happened was that 2 years ago, I had a lead generation agency and I offered

cold email as a service. But at some point, I was spending over $10,000 a month on Microsoft and Google inboxes,

and I had to hire a dedicated team member just to set up the mailboxes one by one. So, at some point, I thought,

there has to be a better way. There has to be a way for us to set up an email infrastructure similar to what Active

Campaign has for newsletter type of emails, but specifically for cold email outreach. So, I ended up partnering with

our now co-founder and CTO, Mo, to build it first for ourselves. Now, I could configure five or 500 mailboxes

literally in seconds and saving most of the costs. And as with many great stories, a lot of people ask me if I

could provide this as a solution. And that was how Mailcale was born. And as a result of saving people a lot of time

and money, we quickly grew this company to over a million in AR in less than a year, which is honestly still surreal to

me. Now, very few people actually know how dedicated email infrastructure works. So, let me show you. When done

right, providers like us buy our own IP spaces. We set up IMAP servers for receiving emails, SMTP servers for

sending emails, and we automate all the needed configurations for cold emails specifically. And then to send millions

of emails without damaging the reputation of our IPs, we monitor bounces and spam complaint rates on a

sender by sender basis so that when a new sender doesn't follow the best practices, their account gets paused and

we educate them on what they need to improve so it doesn't affect other senders. The result of all of this is a

dashboard where you can easily add your own domains or buy similar sounding domains. They'll automatically be

configured and at the end you can bulk import them into any email sending tool like Instantly, Smart Lead, or others.

So, setup-wise, I'd give most dedicated email infrastructure solutions a 10 out of 10 points because the whole process

is automated. Cost-wise, you'll also find the most affordable options here and pay as low as a dollar a month per

inbox with us, for example, instead of $7 a month with Google or Microsoft. So, I'd give it a 10 out of 10 here too for

the pricing. Delivability wise, these inboxes don't necessarily perform better than Google or Outlook inboxes, but also

not worse. The deliverability isn't determined by which mailbox provider you use, but whether you follow the best

practices that unfortunately change all the time. And all of this is also why support is so important. Overall, for

deliverability and support, I'd give the segment 7 out of 10 points. What we personally do to try to bump this up to

a 9 or 10 out of 10 is that we provide a dedicated deliverability specialist to every customer that you can chat with.

Someone who helps make sure that your emails land in the inbox and actively supports you on all the things that

change all the time within cold email. And also, we're the only ones offering a self-healing mechanism, which is

currently in beta. Meaning, we do daily inbox placement tests with an email that just needs to land in the inbox.

Something like, "Hey, John, are you coming to the barbecue on Sunday?" And once we see that a domain is unhealthy

or is underperforming because this email lands in the spam folder, then we automatically remove the domain from

your cold email sending pool and recovered with our own warm-up procedure. Once it's back healthy,

usually within 5 to 7 days, it will automatically be added back to your cold email sending pool. And that is how

combined with the dedicated support, you get significantly better dability with us. Reliability wise, I'd give most

providers in this category an average of five. A lot of email info providers rent IPs instead of owning them. For example,

some rent IPs from Microsoft, which at first seems reasonable, but then you look up Microsoft's policies and you

notice that it's against their policies to send cold emails. So, just like with the Google and Outlook resellers, a lot

of these providers are one complaint away from getting shut down and so is your business if you're relying on them.

We address this by building a fully self-owned email infrastructure, including purchasing our own IP spaces.

And as a result, there's literally no one who can shut us down and nobody who can block your accounts. That's why in

our case, I'd give reliability a 9 out of 10. So, the final question, which mailbox provider should you be using?

I'm going to be honest. If you're planning to send less than 500 cold emails a month, you can stick with one

or two manual Google Workspace accounts that you set up. But if you want to send more than that and if you want to have

the ability to easily scale up or down your outreach, just like with ads, you could give dedicated email

infrastructure a try. For example, with Mailcale, we're the only provider in this space offering a free trial where

we even provide you with a free domain, meaning we're literally spending and losing money on a domain that we buy for

you just so that you can try it out. If you want to take advantage of that offer, I'll leave a link in the

description below. I'm hoping this video was helpful and gave you the answers that you were looking for so that you

can feel confident in making a decision and start scaling your cold outreach. I'll leave a video in the description

that explains everything you need to know about cold emailing, including how you can get 10,000 emails off your idea

clients for less than $50. Make sure to check out that video. And again, if you want to take advantage on the free

trial, I'm going to leave a link for that in the description as well. Season.