Dedicated IP - Direct Mail - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

What is a dedicated IP?

Normally, when sending emails through Direct Mail, a shared IP channel is used by default.

To provide better sending services for professional customers, Alibaba Cloud Direct Mail offers a dedicated IP value-added service. Using a dedicated IP for sending emails protects you from interference by other users, maintains the reputation of your sending domain and IP, and effectively improves email deliverability.

How to purchase a dedicated IP?

You can go to the Direct Mail console homepage and click to enter the purchase page.

Select the region where you need to use the dedicated IP, choose the quantity, and submit the order.

Note: To avoid service interruption, we recommend you select "Auto-Renewal" when making your purchase.

Note

If the inventory is insufficient or the quantity exceeds the limit, you can submit a ticket to request.

After completing the purchase, you can go to the Direct Mail console to configure the dedicated IP. The resource typically takes about 1-5 minutes to become effective.

How to use a dedicated IP?

IP warming

The email delivery process is relatively complex, and various email service providers (ESP) typically set limits on the daily sending volume for each sending domain and IP. Therefore, for domains or IPs that have never sent bulk emails before, it is not advisable to send a large volume of emails in a single day during the initial period.

To ensure good email deliverability, the sending volume must be increased daily until the target of sending a large volume in a single day is achieved. This process of daily increasing the sending volume is called warming.

When you purchase a new dedicated IP, the warming mode is set to "Manual Warming" by default, which means you need to try increasing the daily sending volume yourself until you reach your target value.

Additionally, Alibaba Cloud Direct Mail also provides an "Automatic Warming" feature that can automatically warm up your sending IP address (for mainstream ESPs such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and iCloud) without any manual intervention throughout the process.

Creating IP pools

When you have purchased multiple dedicated IP addresses, you can group these addresses to form what is called an "IP pool." In subsequent sending activities, you can call the IP used for sending according to the IP pool.

Click "Create IP Pool" in the upper right corner of the console,

Enter the IP pool name and associate the IPs to create it successfully (Note: IP pool names must be unique, and each dedicated IP can only be added to one IP pool). The number of IP pools you can create cannot exceed the number of IPs you have purchased.

Common usage of IP pools: Create one IP pool specifically for sending marketing emails, and another for sending triggered (notification) emails.

This lets you separate the reputation of the two types of emails so they do not affect each other. With this configuration, even if a marketing campaign triggers many complaints, the deliverability of your transactional emails will not be affected.

Using dedicated IP for sending emails

Two implementation methods.

Method 1

Set the sending address binding configuration set in the console, and after binding, all sending methods will automatically use dedicated IP addresses. After binding, there is no need to specify the IP pool ID parameter when sending messages. Related documents: Sending configuration (configuration set)

Method 2

When using the console, API, or SMTP to send messages, specify the IP pool parameters.

When sending emails through the console, API, or SMTP, you can simply select the IP pool you want to use.

Using dedicated IP through the console

Create a new email sending task, select the IP pool, and the system will use the configured IP to send the emails.

Using dedicated IP through API or SMTP

Obtain the IP pool ID (not the instance ID or IP address):

API examples:

SMTP examples:

Use message header configuration items to control features over SMTP

FAQ

What is the price of a dedicated IP?

The unit price is: $128 per IP per month. It uses a subscription payment model, and the service becomes effective immediately after purchase.

How many dedicated IPs do I need?

The number of sending IPs can be estimated based on your actual sending volume. Based on experience, a single sending IP can typically support a maximum instantaneous sending volume of approximately 100,000 emails.

Considering business continuity and disaster recovery needs (for example, when a machine bound to a sending IP experiences a breakdown or hardware failure, having at least two hot standby IPs can enable automatic switchover to ensure business is not interrupted), we typically recommend that users purchase at least two sending IPs.

Suggestions for selecting region-matched dedicated IPs

If your email recipients are in a different region from where you activated the Alibaba Cloud Direct Mail service (for example, if you activated the service in China (Hangzhou) but your main recipients are in regions such as the United States or Europe), we recommend that you purchase dedicated IP addresses in the same region as your recipients. Email service providers consider the sender's region when evaluating IP reputation. Sending emails from an IP address in the same region as your recipients helps you establish a better IP reputation and avoid restrictions on cross-region email delivery.

To confirm the region matching plan or purchase a dedicated IP for a specific region, you can submit a ticket.

Will sending emails after the purchased IP expires fail?

No, it will automatically switch to the shared IP to avoid errors.

What is the automatic warming logic for dedicated IP?

Dedicated IP needs to be warmed up to reach the secure reception threshold of the target service provider. When initiating a batch of mail requests, the automatic warming function will first use a dedicated IP for delivery. After the dedicated IP exceeds its frequency limit, it will automatically switch to other dedicated IPs that have completed warming or shared IP channels, avoiding subsequent email errors caused by throttling and saving manual warming time.

Does dedicated IP support unsubscribing?

No, after using a dedicated IP, the IP reputation is affected, so unsubscribing is not supported.

Other questions: Dedicated IP related questions