What are the pros and cons of dedicated IPs?

A dedicated IP belongs only to you. Everything that happens to your sending reputation, every complaint, every bounce, every engagement signal, reflects your practices alone. No shared pools, no mystery neighbors dragging you down.

That's the appeal. It's also the responsibility. A dedicated IP starts with no reputation at all. Before you can send at full volume, you need to warm it up gradually over several weeks, building trust with mailbox providers by starting small and increasing volume consistently. Skip this and you'll hit deliverability walls before you've sent your first real campaign. The warmup process isn't optional.

Dedicated IPs also need regular activity to stay healthy. If you send 100,000 emails in January and then go quiet for two months, the IP's reputation fades. Mailbox providers like consistent patterns. Extended gaps let an IP go cold, and cold IPs need to be warmed again before high-volume sending.

Cost is higher than a shared pool. And you're on your own for reputation management. If something goes wrong, there's no ESP-managed pool to buffer the damage. The practical threshold: dedicated IPs make most sense above roughly 100,000 emails per month, sent consistently. Below that, a well-managed shared pool usually performs better and costs less. If you're in the middle, the decision comes down to how much you want to own your own reputation.