Understanding the difference between a Dedicated IP or a Pool of IPs

Published in may, 19 of 2014

Ip Dedicado

Dedicated IP or a Pool of IPs?

The past weeks we have been commenting about the difference between using a dedicated IP or a Pool of IPs. The correct answer is: depends on the communication strategy you have. You need to make the decision based on your goals and needs. Therefore, the right question is: Which one is the best solution for me?

We will start this article by explaining what a dedicated IP means:

Which is a dedicated IP ?

A dedicated IP gives you the exclusive right to send your communications through a certain IP address, without sharing it with other clients. You will be entirely responsible for its reputation and, according to the volume and respective results, you can plan your communications without depending on other people.

And, what is a Pool of IPs?

In this case, a group of clients is in charge of maintaining the reputation of the IP addresses. This situation can bring advantages and disadvantages for a new client:


•    Advantage: You can benefit from a good reputation already created by the previous clients
•    Disadvantage: One client can decrease the reputation level and compromise other clients’ campaigns.

Several clients ask us: “How to change into a better pool of IPs” or “Should I change to a dedicated IP in order to improve deliverability”. Often, the answers are not easy to be accepted, especially when you mention that in order to improve deliverability rates, what you need to do is improve the email marketing practices.

How are the Pools of IPs assigned to each client?

Each campaign sent through the Emailmanager platform is compared with all the campaigns sent by all the clients. In this case, we can determine if your campaigns are above or below average. In case your campaigns are below average, it would be dangerous to assign your account into a better pool of IPs because you might influence negatively the quality and deliverability of all the clients in that same pool of IPs. It is not easy to be accepted but it would not solve the deliverability problem. What some clients need to do is to change email marketing practices.

How to be in a “better” Pool of IPs?

If you are reading this article, you already know the term “Best Email Marketing Practices” (http://www.emailmanager.com/uk/blog/1/1494/email-marketing-good-practices.html) and if you are our client, you should know that these practices are not strictly related to the cancellation link and a low level in the SpamAssassin tool. There are thousands of documents and articles about the subject but the most important criteria are the consistency of the results, low cancelation rates, complaint levels and high number of interactions.

A dedicated IP delivers better?

As you may know, when it comes to deliverability there aren’t clear answers. Nevertheless, we are going to try to explain it to you the best way we can. All the dedicated IPs have a clean reputation. In the beginning, it is normal that the deliverability rate increases. For example: If you are having problems in Hotmail, a change of IPs might increase the deliverability rate but only in a short-term period because if the problem you had before is not fixed, it will come back, even if the IP is dedicated.

In order to have a clearer picture, several communications require a consistent volume and good results in order to build a good reputation. One bad communication can destroy the reputation. Therefore, it is important to solve the problem, to nip it from the bud.

These rules apply to everyone, no matter the size of your contact list or the amount of emails sent per month. To send an email to an unknown contact is a synonym of falling into a SpamTrap.
Lastly, and after all this explanation, if you follow these practices, you don’t need to worry about being in a pool of IPs or in a dedicated one, we have the best deliverability rate!


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