Verify Domain
Warm Up Domain
Learn how to warm up your domain to avoid deliverability issues
Warm Up Your Domain
Warming up your domain is a safety measure to help your emails reach inboxes reliably. Gradually increasing your sending volume builds a positive reputation with email clients and reduces the risk of deliverability issues.Warming up a domain is a one-time process. Once you’ve built a good reputation, you can maintain higher sending volumes as long as you follow best practices.
Domains vs IP Addresses
Your sender reputation is based on (i) your domain and (ii) your IP address.- Domain is tied to your brand and sending practices. It’s what email clients use to judge whether your emails are trustworthy.
- IP address is managed by Brew. We maintain high-quality shared IPs for all customers. For enterprise customers, we offer dedicated IP addresses upon request (see more below).
How to Warm Up Your Domain
1
Determine your starting point
- New domain: If you’ve never sent emails from your domain, start with a low volume and ramp up gradually.
- Existing domain with good sending history: If you’ve sent emails before and followed best practices, you can start at a higher volume, but still avoid sudden spikes.
- Existing domain with poor sending history: We recommend switching to a new domain or subdomain and following the new domain warm-up process (no cold emails, ever).
2
Gradually ramp up
Start with your most engaged contacts first—those who are likely to open, click, and interact with your emails. This helps build a positive reputation quickly.
For a new domain, use this schedule:
For an existing domain with good history, you can ramp up faster:
Adjust based on your audience size and engagement. If you see high bounce or spam rates, slow down and review your list quality.
| Day | Emails per day | Emails per hour |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Up to 150 | |
| 2 | Up to 250 | |
| 3 | Up to 400 | |
| 4 | Up to 700 | 50 Maximum |
| 5 | Up to 1,000 | 75 Maximum |
| 6 | Up to 1,500 | 100 Maximum |
| 7 | Up to 2,000 | 150 Maximum |
| Day | Emails per day | Emails per hour |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Up to 1,000 | 100 Maximum |
| 2 | Up to 2,500 | 300 Maximum |
| 3 | Up to 5,000 | 600 Maximum |
| 4 | Up to 5,000 | 800 Maximum |
| 5 | Up to 7,500 | 1,000 Maximum |
| 6 | Up to 7,500 | 1,500 Maximum |
| 7 | Up to 10,000 | 2,000 Maximum |
3
Monitor engagement and deliverability
As you gradually increase your sending volume, pay close attention to:
- Open rates: Are recipients opening your emails?
- Click rates: Are they engaging with your content?
- Bounces: Are there any delivery failures?
- Spam complaints: Is anyone marking your emails as spam?
Improve reputation with self-engagement: Send a test email to yourself, open it, and reply to it. This action signals to email providers that your content is valuable and engaging, which can positively impact your sender reputation and deliverability.
4
Maintain best practices
- Use double opt-in for all sign-ups to ensure your list is clean and engaged
- Regularly remove bounces and unengaged contacts—see our Audience Hygiene guide
- Keep your content valuable and relevant to maintain high engagement rates
- Avoid spam trigger words and misleading subject lines
Encourage replies to enhance reputation: Email clients view replies as a strong positive signal that your content is valuable. Brew’s AI will sometimes add questions or reply prompts to your emails (like “What do you think?” or “Any feedback?”) to encourage responses and help with your domain reputation. Make sure you monitor and respond to these replies to maintain the engagement loop.
Monitor Your Sender Reputation
As you warm up your domain, it’s essential to monitor how email providers and security services view your sending reputation. Unlike a credit score, there’s no single universal reputation score for email senders - different providers maintain their own systems. These free tools provide valuable insights into your sending reputation across different platforms:Google Postmaster Tools
Google Postmaster Tools
What it provides: Domain reputation, IP reputation, spam rates, delivery errors, authentication success, and encryption status specifically for Gmail usersWhy it matters: Gmail processes a significant portion of business emails but doesn’t always report spam complaints directly to email service providersHow to set up:
- Go to gmail.com/postmaster and sign in with a Google account
- Click the + button and enter your sending domain
- Google will provide a TXT record to add to your domain’s DNS settings
- Once verified, you’ll see data about your Gmail deliverability
Sender Score
Sender Score
What it provides: A reputation score (0-100) for your IP address based on a 30-day rolling averageWhy it matters: Gives you a numerical benchmark to track improvements in your sending practicesHow to access: Visit senderscore.org and enter your sending IP addressPro tip: Check your score monthly and after any major changes to your email program
Barracuda Reputation System
Barracuda Reputation System
What it provides: Reputation lookups for both IP addresses and domains with “good” or “poor” ratingsWhy it matters: Barracuda is a major email security provider used by many businessesHow to access: Visit barracudacentral.org/lookups and enter your domain or IPPro tip: If you see a “poor” rating, check your authentication records and sending practices immediately
TrustedSource
TrustedSource
What it provides: Detailed information on domain history, activation, and associations beyond basic reputation dataWhy it matters: McAfee’s email filtering uses this data to determine whether to deliver your emailsHow to access: Visit trustedsource.org and check your domainPro tip: Pay special attention to the domain associations section to ensure your domain isn’t linked to suspicious domains
Yahoo Sender Hub
Yahoo Sender Hub
What it provides: Delivery insights and complaint feedback for Yahoo and AOL email addressesWhy it matters: Yahoo/AOL represents a significant portion of consumer email addressesHow to access: Visit senders.yahooinc.com to sign up and monitor your performancePro tip: Focus on maintaining low complaint rates with Yahoo users as they tend to be more active with the “mark as spam” button
For best results, check these tools regularly throughout your domain warm-up process and whenever you make significant changes to your email volume or content strategy. Addressing potential reputation issues early prevents more serious deliverability problems later.
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