If you treat IP warmup as “send 100 emails today and 1,000 tomorrow,” you’re not warming anything. You’re just making your first mistake slower. 

IP warmup is not a spreadsheet exercise! It’s how you show inbox providers (ISPs) that your emails deserve to be inside their inboxes. ​

Done right, IP warmup becomes the quiet bodyguard for your cold email outreach: 

1. It protects your domain.

2. Your sender reputation,

3. And the relationships you’re about to build with your market. 

Done wrong, it accelerates how fast you get ignored, complained about, or blocked. 

What IP warmup actually is/does (and why it matters)

IP warmup in one sentence

IP warmup is a process in which you gradually increase the email volume sent from a new or cold dedicated IP address to build a trusted sender reputation with mailbox providers. 

Instead of blasting thousands of messages on day one, you start with small, carefully selected sends to a group of active engagers and scale only as engagement remains healthy and negative signals remain low. 

Note: If you want to get your very own group of engagers, check out Get Ready For Launch.

IP reputation vs. domain reputation

Inbox providers track both IP reputation (the trustworthiness of the IPs you send from) and domain reputation (the trust tied to your sending domain and subdomains). 

A new dedicated IP starts with no history. Its reputation must be earned through IP warmup, while a shared IP often benefits from existing positive history due to shared previous sender engagement. 

Domain reputation can carry over across IPs, which is why abusing cold outreach on your primary brand domain is so costly in the long term. 

Why cold email outreach raises the stakes

Cold outreach amplifies every risk in IP warmup. Lists are noisier, expectations are lower, and complaint rates are naturally higher than opt‑in newsletters or lifecycle flows. 

When you mix high volumes of cold email with an unproven IP, you’re asking inbox providers to take a leap of faith with the riskiest kind of traffic you send. 

IP warmup as relationship launch, not reputation mask

Just like with domain and email list warmup, the point of IP warmup is not to mask your behaviour for a few week. The purpose is to show that you intend to behave consistently over months and campaigns. 

The first messages you send on a new IP set the tone: you’re either a careful sender building relationships, or a random stranger yelling into inboxes, and soon to be yelling into the big dark emptiness of the spam folder, or worse. 

Shared vs. dedicated IPs: do you even need IP warmup?

When shared IPs make more sense

For most low‑to‑moderate senders, shared IPs are safer and faster. On a well‑managed shared IP, you benefit from a long‑standing, positive reputation built by many good senders. 

You can usually start sending at normal volumes immediately without a full IP warmup plan, as long as you respect list hygiene, engagement, and complaint thresholds. 

Shared IPs are a good fit if:

• You send fewer than ~50,000 emails per month. 

• Your sends are mostly opt‑in newsletters, lifecycle, or product updates. 

• You’re not mixing aggressive cold outreach with critical transactional flows on the same infrastructure. 

When you genuinely need a dedicated IP

Dedicated IPs become useful when you want to build a brand, send high volumes, or need strict isolation: you alone control the reputation of that IP. 

Providers such as SendGrid, Mailjet, AWS SES, and others recommend dedicated IPs only for consistent, high‑volume senders (typically 50k+ emails per month). 

A dedicated IP makes sense if:

• You send large volumes of cold email outreach and don’t want others to affect your risk profile. 

• You separate transactional, lifecycle, and outreach streams onto different IPs to protect critical flows. 

• You want precise control and visibility over IP reputation for compliance or client reporting. 

The hidden risk of “aspirational” dedicated IPs

The worst place to be is on a dedicated IP you can’t actually feed. If your sending volume is too low or inconsistent, inbox providers have too little data to trust you – and a handful of bad sends can kill your IP reputation. 

Many senders “upgrade” to a dedicated IP because it sounds pro, then run tiny, spiky campaigns and wonder why deliverability looks worse than on shared. 

How IP warmup fits into your overall deliverability strategy

IP warmup is one layer: it sits alongside domain warmup, authentication, list hygiene, content quality, and engagement tracking. 

The goal is not “perfect IP” in isolation. It’s a resilient sender reputation where IP, domain, and behaviour all tell inbox providers the same story: your emails are safe, consistent, and valued by recipients. 

How to warm up a new IP for cold email (without burning it)?

Step 1: Set up authentication and routing correctly

Before you send a single email from a new IP, configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC correctly for the domains and subdomains that will use it. 

Use clear, consistent routing: don’t bounce traffic unpredictably between IPs and domains during warm-up, or filters will struggle to identify your patterns. ​

Step 2: Start with your safest possible audience (important!)

If you have engaged opt‑in segments, start your IP warmup there, not with pure cold lists. 

Inbox providers interpret positive early engagement, like high opens, low bounces, and almost no spam complaints, as strong signals that this new IP behaves like a responsible sender. 

If you have no existing audience, you can use email engagers from Get Ready For Launch that combine custom human+AI workflows to warmup your IP and domain. 

Step 3: Ramp volume with discipline, not ego

Most IP warmup guides recommend a gradual increase in daily volume over 2–6 weeks, starting in the low hundreds and stepping up only as metrics stay healthy. 

Large providers like Iterable, Mailjet, and AWS SES explicitly advise 4–8 weeks of controlled ramp‑up when warming new dedicated IPs. 

The trick is not the exact numbers; it’s the discipline to treat engagement and complaints as the brake and accelerator, not your quarterly target.

Step 4: Watch behaviour, not just delivery

Don’t confuse “delivered” with “healthy.” 

Sender reputation is shaped by: 

1. Bounces,

2. Spam complaints.

3. Open and click rates,

4. Deletions without reading.

5. And long‑term engagement trends. 

A warm IP that mostly sends ignored email is not warm for long.​

Use Get Ready For Launch inbox placement tests, Postmaster dashboards, and engagement analytics to understand not just whether emails arrive, but where they land and how people react. 

IP warmup that actually protects relationships (not just charts)

IP warmup as a relationship filter

Every IP warmup plan is secretly a list strategy. If you start by emailing people who never asked to hear from you, don’t open, and quickly complain, you aren’t just hurting your IP, you’re telling ISPs your brand doesn’t respect their users. 

IP warmup done right forces you to clarify: who do we want a relationship with, and what does a good first impression look like for them?

How IP warmup affects future campaigns

The way you behave during IP warmup sets expectations for future sends. If your warmup phase is calm, relevant, and respectful, inbox providers treat later volume increases as evolution, not a threat. 

If your warmup is erratic, spam‑prone, or followed by an abrupt pivot in content or volume, filters treat you like a risk. 

Engagement signals that really move the needle

The behavioural signals that matter during and after IP warmup include:

• High valid delivery and low bounce rates.

• Low spam complaint rates.

• Strong opens and clicks relative to your vertical.

• A few “delete without reading” or “this looks like spam” actions. 

These are the same signals that tell inbox providers you are building real relationships, not just pushing promotions.

No amount of IP warmup can fix bad intent

If your strategy is to blast any scraped address that looks vaguely relevant, IP warmup can’t save you. It might delay the inevitable, but recipients will still ignore, delete, or complain. 

IP warmup is there to help you launch relationships; it cannot manufacture interest where none exists.​

8‑step actionable IP warmup checklist

1. Decide if you truly need a dedicated IP.
   If you send low‑to‑moderate volumes or mostly opt‑in campaigns, a well‑managed shared IP is often safer and easier. 

2. Segment infrastructure by risk.
   Separate cold outreach, lifecycle, and transactional streams by domain/subdomain and IP so one bad campaign doesn’t poison everything. 

3. Configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
   Validate records for the domains that will use the new IP and ensure alignment with your actual sending services. 

4. Start IP warmup with “engaged” recipients.
   Use engaged opt‑in contacts where possible. You can also supplement with Get Ready For Launch email engagers, or start from scratch with them. 

5. Ramp volume slowly over weeks, not days.
   Follow a 2–6 week plan, increasing daily volume only as engagement and complaints stay within healthy ranges. 

6. Monitor IP and domain reputation signals.
   Track bounces, spam complaints, inbox placement, and engagement. Treat warnings as reasons to slow or adjust, not as reasons to push harder. 

7. Align warmup content with future sends.
   Keep tone, brand, and value consistent so filters and humans experience warmup emails and production emails as the same trusted sender. 

8. Keep cleaning and segmenting as you scale.
   Remove invalids and chronic non‑engagers, refine ICP targeting, and adapt your cadence so relationships – not spreadsheets – drive your IP strategy. 

Best IP warmup tools for engagement‑first cold email deliverability

If you are searching for an IP warmup platform, you are not just shopping for a ramp‑up calendar. You’re choosing who will help you combine IP warmup, engagement, and inbox placement into one coherent strategy.

These are the Best IP warmup and inbox placement tools for engagement‑based deliverability in the market:

Whatever toolset you lean on, remember: IP warmup should protect and extend genuine relationships, not just make your charts look green.

Having real engagers helps a lot! You should check Get Ready For Launch next.

IP warmup is there to help people hear from you – not to help you yell louder.

IP warmup will not make strangers care about irrelevant offers, vague pitches, or spammy cadences. At best, it buys you a fair shot at the inbox; what you do with that shot is entirely on you. 

If you treat IP warmup as a ritual before blasting scraped lists, you will keep burning IPs and domains in a loop. If you treat it as the moment you prove you deserve a long‑term place in your buyers’ inboxes, you will start to see it for what it is: a relationship launch system, not a volume hack. 

An engagement‑first, human+AI email warmup platform like Get Ready For Launch is built for that second mindset, i.e., helping you warm IPs, protect your domain, and give your best prospects a reason to keep opening your emails long after warmup is “done.”