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Your sending tool probably includes warmup already, and it probably costs less than we do. Every product below is real software that works. Each comparison sets one of them beside a service that owns the DNS records, chases the blocklists and answers when something breaks, and says plainly where the cheaper tool is the right purchase.
How it all works
Most teams shopping for warmup are not unhappy with their sending tool. They are unhappy that replies dried up and nobody can say why. Those are two different problems and these pages separate them.
1
Instantly and Smartlead both include warmup at no extra charge, so find out whether yours is switched on before buying anything else. Then check when your SPF record was last read by a person, and whether anybody has ever opened a DMARC report.
2
Warmup pricing splits into flat and per mailbox, and the two diverge quickly. Each comparison works the cost at five inboxes and again at fifteen, and counts the pieces quoted separately. Placement testing is usually the one that surprises people.
3
If somebody in house reads DMARC reports and files delisting requests, buy the tool direct and keep the difference. If that person does not exist, no warmup tool will create one. We say which case you are in on every page.
Four products, four different answers to who owns your sending reputation.
VS
Warmup Bundled In
Unlimited Inboxes
Records Still Yours
Instantly bundles unlimited email accounts and unlimited warmup into every tier, starting at forty seven dollars a month on the Growth plan. If warmup is the only thing you are missing, that is honest value and it is cheaper than we are. What the subscription does not buy is anybody to publish your SPF record, read the DMARC reports, or chase a blocklist removal.
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VS
Unlimited Mailboxes
Placement Costs Extra
Built For Agencies
Smartlead starts at thirty nine dollars a month and puts unlimited mailboxes on every plan, which is real value if you are running volume. Read the add-on column before setting it beside us. SmartDelivery, the placement testing that shows where your mail actually landed, is quoted separately from forty nine dollars a month and again at one hundred and seventy four.
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VS
Warmup Sold Alone
Priced Per Inbox
Free With lemlist
lemwarm is the one product here that sells warmup on its own terms, across a network of twenty thousand domains, and it comes free with any lemlist plan. The pricing is per email address rather than per plan: twenty nine dollars a month on Essential and forty nine on Smart. Five inboxes reaches a hundred and forty five, which is where a flat price starts to matter.
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VS
Managed, Not Self Serve
Ninety Six Per Mailbox
Demo Before Pricing
Folderly is the closest thing on this page to what we do, a managed deliverability service rather than a tool you drive yourself. It is also the most expensive by a wide margin, listed at ninety six dollars per mailbox per month on the annual plan, and you request a demo rather than signing up. Five inboxes lands near four hundred and eighty dollars.
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About the service
Managed warmup is not a tool licence with our logo on it. Your sending accounts stay in your name on your own Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. We publish and align the authentication records, ramp each inbox on a curve built for it, watch the blocklists, file the delisting requests, and say so when warmup is not your real constraint. You run the campaigns. Everything underneath them is ours.
Cold email is the one service on this site where the tool matters least and the sending reputation matters most. Any of these platforms will send. What separates them is what happens to your domain after a few thousand messages, which depends on warmup, list quality and whether anybody is watching the bounce rate. The thing you are actually risking is the domain your invoices go out from.
The sensible practice is to send from a separate domain, warm it over weeks rather than days, and keep volumes low enough that replies and bounces stay in a healthy ratio. None of that is a feature you can buy. It is a discipline, and the platforms below will happily let you ignore all of it, because the consequences land on you rather than on them.
It is also worth being honest about what cold email is good for now. It works for a narrow, well researched list where the message is specific enough that a human would plausibly reply. If the plan is to buy a list and blast it, no platform here will save you and we would rather not take the work.
Outreach fails quietly. A broken DKIM signature bounces nothing at all, it just moves you to promotions while your reply rate slides and no error is ever written down. We publish SPF, DKIM and DMARC on every sending domain, keep an eye on the SPF lookup count, and recheck the chain whenever you add a tool that sends on your behalf.
A brand new domain and a mailbox that went quiet for a month need different handling, and the single volume slider in a self serve tool serves neither of them well. Every account gets its own curve, adjusted week to week against what the reputation signals are doing, with warmup volume tracking your live sending at roughly one to one.
Most tools show a red indicator and stop there. We identify the list, work out what triggered the entry, fix the cause underneath it, then submit the removal and watch until it clears. That last step is the one nobody else counts as part of the job, and it is usually the difference between a bad week and a bad quarter.
What does managed warmup do that my sending tool does not?
Your tool warms mailboxes. It does not publish your SPF record, count the lookups against the limit of ten, notice when a new CRM quietly breaks alignment, or file a delisting request and chase it to completion. Those are the jobs that decide placement, and every one of them needs a person rather than a toggle.
Why did our replies drop when nothing bounced?
Because placement fails silently. Mail routed to promotions or spam has still been accepted, so nothing bounces and no error reaches your sending tool. The usual causes are authentication that drifted out of alignment, a domain pushed too hard in its first weeks, or a list with dead addresses in it. Seed testing is the only way to see where mail arrived rather than guess at it.
Do we have to move our mailboxes to you?
No, and we would rather you did not. You keep your own Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 accounts and we connect to them. The domains and the sending reputation you pay to build stay in your name, so if you ever stop working with us there is nothing to hand back. Owning the mailboxes is the one thing we deliberately leave with you.
Does warmup actually work, or is it sold on open rates?
It is one factor and not the biggest. Worth knowing before you read any vendor chart: Gmail does not measure opens, and Google states it cannot validate open rates that other vendors report. A warmup product sold on open rate graphs is showing you a number Gmail never recorded. What moves placement is authentication that passes, a complaint rate held under a tenth of a percent, and volume climbing at a pace a real business could produce.
Which of these tools publishes DNS records for us?
None of them. Instantly, Smartlead and lemwarm all check your records and warn you when something looks wrong, which is useful and is not the same as fixing it. Somebody still has to open the DNS, write the record correctly, and come back when the next tool you add breaks it. On this service that somebody is us.
Why not just buy the cheapest platform and run it ourselves?
You should, if the tool is the only thing you are missing. Smartlead starts at thirty nine dollars a month and Instantly at forty seven, both with warmup included, and set against our one hundred and twenty nine that is not a close contest on price. What neither one includes is somebody who owns the records, reads the reports, and chases the listings. That is what we sell, and it is the expensive thing to hire.
How long before we can send at full volume?
Two to four weeks for a brand new domain, and around two weeks for a mailbox that has gone quiet. lemwarm tells its own customers to expect roughly four weeks of warmup and two more before real campaigns, which is honest and matches what we see. A domain that has already been damaged takes longer, sometimes six weeks or more, depending on what caused the damage.
What happens if we already run a warmup tool?
Switch it off before we start. Two warmup systems running on one mailbox produce a sending pattern that looks like neither of them, and the volume counts twice against quotas you cannot see. The audit finds whatever is currently connected, so if something is running we will tell you what to turn off and when.
Can we keep our sending tool and still use you?
Yes, and most clients do. We are not trying to replace Instantly, Smartlead or whatever you send with. The campaign tool stays yours and the infrastructure underneath it becomes ours, which is also why we never need access to your campaign content in order to do the work.
Is there a dashboard we log into?
No, and that is deliberate. There is no seat to learn and no weekly export for somebody here to interpret. What arrives is a monthly summary per inbox covering placement direction, authentication status and any blocklist activity, written in plain language. When something needs a decision from you, we come and ask for it.
At what point does paying us beat paying for a tool?
When outreach starts mattering to revenue and nobody on the team wants to own DNS records. Below that line, buy Instantly or Smartlead and switch the warmup on. Above it, once you employ somebody whose actual job is deliverability, buy the tools direct and keep the difference. We will tell you which side of it you are on.
What if warmup is not our real problem?
Then we say so before taking your money, and the audit costs nothing. Reputation is only one input. A list nobody verified, an offer that reads like a template, or a domain burned past the point where rebuilding beats replacing it will each survive a perfect ramp untouched. Selling six weeks of warmup against any of those would be dishonest.
What does the higher tier add?
Inbox Warmup covers up to five sending inboxes with authentication, a ramp per mailbox, blocklist monitoring and monthly reporting. Managed Deliverability covers up to fifteen and adds seed testing that shows where your mail actually landed, recipient list verification, extra sending domains configured and authenticated, DNS remediation, and a quarterly review. Seed testing is a paid add-on at most tool vendors.
Are we locked in?
No. Month to month, thirty days notice, no setup fee. Because the mailboxes were never ours there is nothing to hand back when you go. One thing worth stating plainly: warmup is not a purchase you finish. Reputation decays once the engagement signals stop, so treat it as a running cost of the channel rather than an onboarding step.
What do you need from us to start?
Admin access to the mailboxes you want warmed, DNS access for the sending domains, and a rough target for daily volume. The audit runs first and takes a couple of days. We report what we found, fix what needs fixing, then start the ramp. Nothing changes on your normal business email at any point in that.
