Cold Email Infrastructure Planner: how many domains do you need?
Start from the meetings you want and work backwards. You get the leads, emails, mailboxes and domains it takes, and a monthly cost range. Every assumption is a field you can change, with where its default comes from.
- You enter
- Meeting target, funnel rates, sending limits, prices
- You get
- Leads, emails, mailboxes, domains and a monthly cost range
- Takes
- 3 minutes
- Costs
- Nothing. Email only for the ramp-up schedule
Every number below is an assumption you can change. Under each one it says where the default comes from.
1What you want
2Your funnel
Human replies, divided by every delivered email, follow-ups included. 2.07% is what we measured across 12,973 cold emails in the cold outreach benchmarks. Vendors quote 3% to 5%.
My planning assumption, not a measured number. Replies include 'not now' and 'take me off your list'. Count your own if you have them.
Also a planning assumption. Use your own once you have twenty or so interested replies to count.
A first email and two follow-ups. Our follow-up statistics show replies dropping with every step after the first.
3Sending limits
5 is the number I run, from the cold email domain setup guide.
Five mailboxes at 5 a day is 25 per domain, my daily cap. Reputation is tracked per domain, so more mailboxes on one domain doesn't add capacity.
Weekdays only, about 21.
4Prices your assumptions
A .com or country domain at a normal registrar.
31 mailboxes, sending 3,221 emails a month to 1,074 new leads.
At these rates one meeting takes about 322 emails. That's 67 replies a month, 20 of them interested.
- New leadsper month, 3 emails each1,074
- Emails sentper month3,221
- Emails per sending dayover 21 days154
- Mailboxesat 5 a day each31
- Domainsat 5 mailboxes each7
- Cost per monthdomains, mailboxes, tool, verification€140 to €380
- Cost per meetinginfrastructure only€14 to €38
About 22 cold emails per domain per day, inside the 25 I run.
Not in the cost: the lead list itself, writing the copy, and your time reading replies.
Your ramp-up, week by week
Leave your email and you'll see, right here, the warm-up and ramp schedule for your domains: what they send each week and when you hit full volume.
It goes to my inbox, nowhere else. No newsletter.
Rather not run the sending side yourself?
Send me your website and I'll record a 10-minute video going through it, your positioning and your sales process, with the three leaks I'd fix first. Free, in your inbox within 48 hours.
Work backwards from the meetings.
One meeting takes 1 divided by (reply rate times interested share times booking rate) emails. Times your monthly meeting target, that's the emails per month. Divided by emails per lead, it's the new leads you need. Divided by sending days, the daily volume. Divided by what one mailbox sends a day, the mailboxes. Divided by mailboxes per domain, the domains. Everything rounds up, because nobody sells 14.2 domains.
The default reply rate is the one we measured, 2.07% over 12,973 delivered cold emails, not the 3% to 5% in vendor decks. The share of replies that are interested and the share of those that book are my planning assumptions. There's no measured number behind them on this site, so they're the first two to replace with your own.
The limit that matters is per domain, not per mailbox. Filters track reputation per domain, so ten mailboxes at 10 a day on one domain is one domain sending 100. I run 25 per domain per day and the planner warns you above that. How I set the domains up, and what got some of mine listed, is in the cold email domain setup guide. Run every new domain through the domain checker before it sends a single email.
The cost range covers infrastructure only: domains, mailboxes, a sending tool with warm-up, and verification. Every price is a placeholder to overwrite with today's price for what you actually buy. The list, the copy and your own time aren't in it, and those are usually the bigger costs.
Questions people ask
How many domains do I need for cold email?
Work it out from the volume: emails per day divided by (emails per mailbox times mailboxes per domain). At the limits I run, 5 a day per mailbox and 5 mailboxes per domain, every domain carries 25 a day, so 250 emails a day needs 10 domains. Then add one or two spares that are warming, so a domain that goes bad can be swapped out the same day.
How many cold emails does it take to book one meeting?
At the defaults in this planner, about 322: a 2.07% reply rate, 30% of replies interested, and half of those booking. Change any of the three and that number moves a lot, which is the whole point of planning it. The reply rate is measured across 12,973 of our delivered cold emails; the other two are my planning assumptions, so replace them with your own as soon as you have them.
Why is the default reply rate so low?
Because it counts every delivered email in every sequence, follow-ups, dead segments and stopped sequences included, and leaves out auto-replies. Vendor figures of 3% to 5% usually come from one winning campaign. Plan on those and you'll buy a fraction of the domains you need, run out of volume, and conclude that cold email doesn't work. If your own reply rate is better, put it in.
Is anything I enter stored?
No. The planner runs in your browser and nothing is sent while you type. Your email address leaves the page only if you ask for the ramp-up schedule.
Rather not run the infrastructure yourself?
Domains, warm-up, per-domain caps, verification and reply routing are the boring half of outbound, and the half that decides if the other half works. I run it for B2B founders every week.