How do Dedicated IPs work?
MailBlastr sends on a shared, professionally-managed IP pool by default, and Scale plans can add a dedicated IP. Here's why shared is the right default for most senders, what a dedicated IP actually buys you, and when it helps versus hurts.
The sending IP address is one identifier inbox providers like Gmail use to track sender reputation and make filtering decisions. A natural question is whether you should be on a dedicated IP — a range of IPs used only by you — instead of a shared pool.
By default, MailBlastr sends all mail on a shared, professionally-warmed IP pool. For most senders that is genuinely the better choice. If you outgrow it, Scale plans can add a dedicated IP (we provision, warm up, monitor, and auto-scale it for you), and Enterprise plans include one — contact us to provision. This page explains what dedicated IPs do and when they help versus hurt, so you can judge which model fits your sending.
What a dedicated IP is
By default, most platforms — MailBlastr included — put you on shared IPs: a set of addresses used across many senders, whose reputation is the aggregate of everyone's behavior. A dedicated IP assigns a range exclusively to your sending, so the reputation reflects only you. Done well, a dedicated IP must be warmed up gradually (a new IP has no reputation and is scrutinized), scaled to per-provider rate limits, and monitored continuously — all of which are delicate and time-consuming.
Why dedicated IPs are no longer a silver bullet
Historically, a dedicated IP was seen as *the* ingredient for great deliverability. That's no longer true. Inbox providers now weight domain reputation, sending history, and sending feedback (bounces and complaints) far more heavily than raw IP reputation. Authenticating your domain and keeping complaints low matters more than which IP your mail leaves on.
The one thing a dedicated IP does buy: no noisy neighbors
The genuine benefit of a dedicated IP is removing the risk of noisy neighbors. On a shared pool you ride on the aggregate reputation of everyone in it — usually a positive, since there's power in numbers, but a small group of senders who want full, isolated control over their own IP reputation prefer a dedicated IP for that reason.
When a dedicated IP would actually hurt
For many senders a dedicated IP hurts rather than helps — which is exactly why a shared pool is the better default. A dedicated IP is a poor fit if you have:
- Low volume — under ~30k emails/month often isn't enough to keep an IP warm, and a cold IP delivers worse than a warm shared one.
- Inconsistent sending — sudden swings in volume damage a dedicated IP's reputation.
- Imperfect practices — a dedicated IP exposes your sending behavior even more directly, with no pool to absorb it.
- No sending history — a brand-new sender has nothing to build a dedicated reputation on.
- An IP-allowlisting requirement — managed shared pools scale dynamically and don't expose a fixed list of IPs to allowlist.
When dedicated IPs make sense (and what you would need)
Dedicated IPs tend to pay off only for high, steady, well-behaved volume from an established sender — the profile where isolation from noisy neighbors outweighs the cost of warming and maintaining your own IP. As a rule of thumb the industry uses, a dedicated IP wants roughly:
- Consistent volume comfortably above 500 emails/day (and ideally well over 30k/month) to stay warm.
- Steady, predictable sending rather than bursts.
- A clean track record — low bounces and complaints.
- Fully authenticated, verified domains.