How Many Cold Emails to Send Per Day for the Best Response Rates?

How many cold emails should you send per day? 

It’s the first question that comes to mind when starting a cold email outreach campaign (for you, me, and everyone).

Should you send 50, 20, or just 10?

How many is too many before you risk getting flagged as spam?

When I started, I had the same question. I assumed that sending more emails would generate more leads and sales. 

But that’s not how cold emailing works. You have to be careful, especially when using a new domain.

From my experience, I’ve run campaigns that scaled to hundreds of emails a day. But I’ve also seen targeted campaigns with just 20 emails a day bring in great results.

The right number depends on your goals, strategy, and setup. In this blog, you’ll learn to help you find the number to get results without risking your email outreach. 

Let’s get started. 

Why Does the Number of Cold Emails You Send Matter?

The number of cold emails you send matters because it can either make or break your cold campaigns. Here are the core reasons why cold numbers are important. 

1. Protects Deliverability of Your Domain
2. Saves Your Sender Reputation from Getting Messed Up
3. Improves Engagement Rate of Your Cold Email Campaigns
4. Testing and Optimization of Your Cold Email Campaigns
5. Know When to Scale Your Cold Email Outreach

1. Protects Deliverability of Your Domain

Whether you are sending cold emails for the first time or the ten thousandth time, you must be careful not to send too many at once, as doing so can get you into trouble. 

Remember, every email account has limits on how many cold emails can be sent in a day. 

What happens if you cross the limits? 

There is a high chance of your email account being flagged as spam. In layman’s terms, emails sent from email providers will start landing your emails in the spam folders of recipients. 

Yes, Google, Outlook, Proton mail, whatever ESP you use to send emails. (I’ll explain the daily email-sending limits later in this blog)

2. Saves Your Sender Reputation from Getting Messed Up

Think of your sender reputation as your trust score with email service providers. If you send too many cold emails and don’t get engagement, you are probably damaging your sender’s reputation. 

Trust me, fixing damaged reputations for email accounts is a difficult job. I have resolved these issues in the past. 

3. Improve the Engagement Rate of Your Cold Email Campaigns

Think about which types of emails you would generally like to read first. It doesn’t matter if you have time. 

Either way, the emails that provide value, teach you, or educate you at least have personalization, right? 

Sending too many emails at once doesn’t work or provide results in cold email campaigns, especially when the emails are generic. 

4. Testing and Optimization of Your Cold Email Campaigns

The number of cold email outreach allows you to test and optimize your campaigns based on the results you obtain.

The reason is the more emails you send, the more data you collect. 

The data of your campaigns allows you to understand what works best for you and what does not. (You name it based on subject lines, CTAs, timing, or level of personalization).

5. Know When to Scale Your Cold Email Outreaching

You must reach more people and grab more opportunities to grow your business. 

In cold emailing, the number of outreach emails is directly connected to your ability to scale your campaigns. 

I’ve experienced that you should understand how many emails you can send daily without sacrificing your deliverability score. 

Finding the correct number for your cold campaigns helps you to scale your outreach efforts accordingly. 

For example, if you’re starting with a new domain, sending 20 emails per day to begin with is enough. Over time, you can gradually increase your outreach to 50 emails a day to hit your goals.

When deciding how many cold emails to send daily, aiming for 50 to 100 is a reliable range. However, to stay on the safe side, you can stick to 20 to 50 emails daily.

Make sure that whenever you email your prospects, you have properly targeted lists, subject lines, and clear CTAs for your readers. 

I advise you to emphasize QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. 

If your email domain is new, you should start by sending small numbers or batches of emails. 

You need to find the right balance between email volume and personalization to make your campaigns successful. 

How Many Cold Emails Should You Send Per Day? [Quick Answer]

Here are general guidelines on how many emails you should send daily based on different scenarios.

Additionally, if you want to determine how many cold emails to send, you can use this formula. 

Formula to Determine Cold Emails Per Day per Account

(Total email sending limit per domain) ÷ (Number of email accounts) = Emails per account per day

This means each account can safely send 50 cold emails per day without exceeding the recommended limits.

Probably, the most obvious question you would have here is about email sending limits. 

So, you might be thinking about sending different ESPs via email. 

Check the following table to understand it. 

Note: The email sending limits mentioned above apply to regular emails, not cold emails.

How Can You Send a Higher Volume of Cold Emails Without Putting Your Domain at Risk?

If you want to send cold emails without risking your domain, you need to understand the correct process. Sending too many emails from a single account can harm your sender’s reputation and lead to deliverability issues.

The best way to scale cold emails is by using multiple email accounts, warming them up properly, and setting proper sending limits. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it:

• Step 1: Sign Up for Saleshandy
• Step 2: Set Up Your Email Accounts
• Step 3: Connect Your Email Accounts
• Step 4: Warm Up Your Email Accounts
• Step 5: Set Up Your Email Campaign
• Step 6: Launch Your Campaign

1. Sign Up for Saleshandy

• Visit the Saleshandy website and sign up using your email.

2. Set Up Your Email Accounts

• Use secondary domains, not your primary ones, to avoid spam. Use our email account calculator to decide how many domains and emails you need.

3. Connect Your Email Accounts to Saleshandy

• Go to the Saleshandy dashboard.
• Click the settings icon and choose “Email Accounts.”

• Add your email accounts by selecting your ESP and following the prompts.

• Set sending limits: keep daily emails under 50, set a time interval of 60-190 seconds, and enable email ramp-up (start at 10-15%).

4. Warm Up Your Email Accounts

• Connect your accounts with TrulyInbox for automated warm-up, improving your sender reputation.

5. Set Up Your Email Campaign

• Create a sequence and write a personalized, engaging email with a clear CTA.

• Upload a verified lead list to avoid bounces.

6. Launch Your Campaign

• Send a test email to check the setup.
• Enable sender rotation to distribute emails across accounts.
• Use the Sequence Score tool for insights, and perform A-Z testing for optimal results.

• Once ready, hit “Activate.”

Next, let’s learn about the key factors influencing cold email limits. 

What Factors Should Influence Your Cold Email Limits?

Here are the five key factors that influence your cold email lists. 

1. Email Service Providers Limits 

All platforms like Google, Outlook, or tools like Google Workspace/Microsoft 365 have set limits on how many emails you send daily. 

If you exceed your email accounts’ limits, ESPs will flag you as spam. What should you do to avoid being flagged? 

You must check the ESP guidelines you are using. (Google email sender guidelines and Microsoft sender and receiving limits)

You must start small and gradually scale your outreach of your cold emails. 

2. Sender Reputation and Email Domain Health

You must check your domain reputation if your cold emails are landing in spam folders. If your email domain has a poor reputation, you will have lower deliverability. 

How do you know whether ESPs flag you or not? It’s simple. 

You can use different tool platforms like TrulyInbox, Mailbox, or MXToolbar. These tools help you monitor and check your domain health.

Apart from that, ensure you have properly authenticated your domain with SPK and DKIM, and DMARC. (I would say authentication of the domain is helpful because it provides ESP signals that you are not a spammer)

3. Audience and Personalization of Your Content

Whether you send your emails to CEOs, Co-founders, marketers, or sales professionals, you must write personalized emails. 

Why? Personalization in the email draft improves the chances of your emails getting opened. 

If your emails don’t get opened, you are getting less engagement. The lower the engagement, the more chances of getting as flagged as spam. 

Sending hyper-personalized emails could be the best way to avoid the above problem. To personalize your cold emails, you can use merge, variable, and spintax tags. 

If you want to learn in detail how to write personalized emails for your cold email campaigns, here is our complete guide on writing your perfect cold email draft. 

4. Compliance with Laws and Governance 

When writing emails for your cold prospects, you must personalize them. However, to personalize cold emails, you must also follow laws. 

You must follow restrictions imposed by laws like GDPR (EU) and CAN-SPAM (U.S.), as well as regulations for industries like healthcare (HIPAA) or finance (FINRA). 

All these laws regulate how businesses collect, store, and process personal data, including email outreach for marketing purposes. 

5. Engagement Metrics That You Need to Take Care

How would you know if your cold email campaigns are performing well? The answer is simple: Engagement metrics. 

Yes, cold emailing is a game of numbers if you pick the right one that matches your goal. (I know your question, and the answer is experimenting). 

Whether you have a new or established domain for cold emailing, you have to scale accordingly, which requires engagement metrics that impact your sender’s reputation. 

Email service providers monitor all three metrics above to determine whether your emails are valuable or spammy. 

You can increase your daily sending limits without triggering restrictions if your engagement is high. 

Here are the additional pointers you should take care of when you are looking to improve your engagement metrics. 

• 80/20 Rule: The 80/20 Rule states that 20% of your list will drive 80% of replies. Therefore, quality is more important than quantity. 
• Clean List: Tools like NeverBounce or ZeroBounce remove invalid emails, reduce bounce rates, and protect your reputation.
• Gradual Scaling: Email warm-up and steady sending patterns help maintain deliverability.
• Positive Replies: You get more replies and fewer spam complaints, which allows you to scale your outreach work.

How to Determine the Right Cold Email Volume for Your Campaign?

Cold email volume isn’t one-size-fits-all. The “right” number depends on your domain health, audience, and goals. 

Whether you’re using a new domain, an established one, or even subdomains, you need to customize your strategy, which is important for success. 

Here’s how to determine the optimal number of cold emails for your specific situation to send daily.

1. How Many Cold Emails to Send Daily with a New Domain
2. How Many Cold Emails to Send with an Established Domain
3. How Many Emails to Send for Warming Up a New Domain
4. How Many Emails to Send for High-Volume Outreach with an Established Domain
5. How Many Emails to Send for Domains with Negative Reputation

1. How Many Cold Emails to Send Daily with a New Domain

When it comes to new domains, they lack email reputation, which makes them prone to spam filters. To avoid being flagged by ESP, you need to follow this approach. 

Initially, for a new domain, you need to begin with 10 to 20 emails per day to avoid triggering spam flags. 

The next phase is about warming up your domain, which you can do by gradually increasing volume by 20–50 emails per week over 4–8 weeks.

Why: A gradual approach ensures that your domain builds a positive reputation with email providers, reducing the risk of being marked as spam. 

2. How Many Cold Emails to Send with an Established Domain

If you have an established domain with a strong reputation, that means low bounce and high open rates, and you can send emails in higher volumes. 

But, I suggest the following way. 

You should send between 200 and 500 emails daily, depending on your engagement history. 

Next, as per Gmail or Outlook guidelines, you should keep your bounce rates below 2% and spam complaints below 0.1%. 

Why: If you have established domains and earned trust already, you must maintain high engagement and low complaint rates. 

3. How Many Emails to Send for Warming Up a New Domain

In this case, if you have a new domain and have already started sending cold emails, you can’t land in the primary inbox. 

Probably, you would be lacking in establishing your domain reputation. So, what’s the right way? 

In my experience, warming up your new domain can be done by building consistency. 

Here is what I suggest you do: 

• Warm-Up Timeline: Plan for 4–8 weeks.
• Week 1: Send 20–50 emails per day.
• Weeks 2–4: Increase by 10–20 emails per week.
• Week 5+: Stick at 100–200 emails per day.

An advanced tip would be to combine cold emails with regular email activities like team communication or make it a kind of channel to receive and send emails. 

Why? This helps you to mimic natural email behavior. 

Remember, you must avoid sudden spikes in sending emails at a scale that can trigger spam filters. Building or scaling gradually will be helpful to you. 

Warming up is an activity that actually mimics natural email behavior and assures email service providers that your domain isn’t a spam risk. 

4. How Many Emails to Send for High-Volume Outreach with an Established Domain

If you are running a high-volume outreach campaign with an established domain, you still need to send 500 to 1000 emails daily. (That’s the upper cap I’m suggesting you)

What about on an hourly basis? You should not exceed 100. To avoid hitting EPS, the ideal range of sending emails per hour with a high-authority domain reputation would be 50 to 100.

A strong point to consider here is having a rotation of accounts. Yes! You must use multiple email addresses under the same domain to distribute the load. (For example, I would say jason@, sales@, or marketing@)

Remember, sending a bulk volume of cold emails doesn’t mean spam. Your cold emails must be personalized and comply with CAN-SPAM and GDPR regulations. 

Established domains can handle higher volumes, but you need to maintain quality and compliance to make sure your emails land in inboxes. 

5. How Many Emails to Send for Domains with Negative Reputation

A poor sender score (high spam complaints) requires immediate damage control. That means you need to take immediate action. 

You need to drop 10 to 20 emails per day or pause your cold emails entirely. 

How to resolve the issue: 

• Find and remove the email addresses that are invalid using tools like NeverBounce or ZeroBounce.
• Start re-engaging with inactive subscribers by providing value-oriented content. 
• Consider migrating to a new domain if your reputation is irreparable. 

Reducing volume and focusing on re-engagement helps rebuild trust with email providers over time.

Can You Increase Your Cold Email Volume by Time?

Here is the process I’ve followed to increase my cold email campaigns. You can follow this process to scale your cold email campaigns.

1. Start with Domain Warm-Up: Your Foundation
2. Increase Email Volume And Parallely Track Your Metrics
3. Upgrade Your Email Infrastructure
4. Clean and Segment Your List
5. Automate Follow-Ups With the Personal Touch
6. Monitor the Behavior of Your Email Service Provider

1. Start with Domain Warm-Up: Your Foundation

When you’re using a new domain or email account, it starts afresh. 

Email providers don’t know you yet, so they’ll treat you like an unknown sender. 

If you send out a large volume of emails from day one, they’ll almost certainly end up in spam folders, or worse, your account could get blocked.

Trust me, and I’ve been there. A bad domain reputation can take weeks to recover from. That’s why domain warm-up is a non-negotiable first step.

How I Warm Up My Domain

Here’s the process I follow when warming up a new domain:

• Weeks 1-2: I keep it slow—5 to 10 emails per day, but they’re only to existing, engaged contacts like clients, colleagues, or partners. (Make your domain looks like legitimate)
• Weeks 3-4: Once the domain starts getting trusted, I increase it to 20-30 emails per day. Now, I mix in some cold prospects, but I still only send emails to high-quality leads to avoid any risk of hitting spam filters.
• Weeks 5-6: By now, the domain is comfortable with the email provider’s system, so I ramp up to 50-75 emails per day. At this stage, I’m sending to verified email addresses to get maximum engagement or open rates. 

Tools I Use to Automate Warm-Up

To keep an eye on my domain health, I check in with Google Postmaster Tools and MXToolbox. These tools track important metrics like spam complaints and IP reputation so I can address any issues before they escalate.

2. Increase Email Volume And Parallely Track Your Metrics

You can’t just blindly increase volume and hope for the best. I always keep a close eye on a few key metrics to make sure my email campaigns are heading in the right direction:

• Open Rate: If it stays above 25%, you are good to scale. If it drops, you need to evaluate.
• Bounce Rate: I aim to keep this under 2%. If I see a higher bounce rate, I must clean my list.
• Spam Complaints: This is non-negotiable. Anything above 0.1% (1 complaint per 1,000 emails) tells me I need to change my approach.

How I Scale My Volume

• Weeks 1-2: I start with 20-50 emails/day, keeping it low while I build trust with my audience.
• Weeks 3-4: If everything’s looking good, I increase by 10-20% (so 50 → 60 emails/day).
• Week 5 and Beyond: If my open rates are still healthy, I’ll keep adding 10-15% more volume every week until I reach my ESP’s limit (e.g., 200 emails/day with Google Workspace).

3. Upgrade Your Email Infrastructure

When I first started, I used free email accounts like Gmail. (Yes, of course, I faced a problem of sending limits, and even I faced issues of deliverability) I upgraded from free email accounts to Google Workspace business plans to resolve the issue. 

Steps to Scale Your Email Infrastructure

Here’s the process I follow:

You can switch your cold email infrastructure. For example, I use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 due to their high daily email-sending limits. 

(Don’t skip the next point that is most important when you switch to the business email provider)

You need to start using a dedicated SMTP service that helps you to improve your deliverability. You also get advanced analysis that helps track your email campaign performance. 

Further, you need to rotate multiple domains. For example, when sending 500+ emails/day, you must have 2 or 3 domains to divide the email load. 

Using rotating multiple domains helps you get safe spam filtering due to one IP address overload. 

4. Clean and Segment Your List

One thing I can’t stress enough: a clean list is a healthy list. I’ve seen firsthand how a “dirty” list can tank my deliverability and engagement rates. You might be sending thousands of emails, but it’s all for nothing if they’re not reaching real people.

How I Clean and Segment My List

Verification of Emails: I use tools like Hunter.io and NeverBounce to remove invalid emails. I make sure all emails are valid before sending them to avoid hard bounces.

Segment by Engagement:

• Tier 1: Highly engaged prospects (opened/replied) → Follow up with these leads first.
• Tier 2: Inactive leads → Re-engage them with a win-back campaign.

You need to remove subscribers immediately, which is essential for compliance and ensuring I don’t waste efforts on unengaged contacts.

5. Automate Follow-Ups With the Personal Touch

About 40-60% of replies I get come from follow-ups, so automating them is key. But I also want to maintain a personal touch so prospects don’t feel like they’re getting a generic email.

How I Automate Follow-Ups with Personalization

• I use Saleshandy or SmartReach to automate follow-ups. 
• 3–5 follow-ups per prospect is the number that works best for me to get replies.
• I added dynamic fields to make the emails feel more personal, like: “Hey [Prospect Name], I noticed you downloaded our ebook on [Topic].”

Pause follow-ups automatically if someone replies or unsubscribes, which keeps things compliant.

6. Monitor the Behavior of Your Email Service Provider

Email providers change their algorithms all the time. What worked last month might not work this month. Over time, I’ve learned to monitor my email metrics closely and adapt when necessary.

Here are the red flags you’re scaling too fast.

• If your cold email open rate drops from 30% to 10%.
• If your cold emails are landing in Promotions or Spam folders.
• If you are getting warning emails from ESP about suspicious activity. 

So, what shall you do to avoid this problem? 

• You must decrease volume by 50% for the first and second weeks. 
• You need to re-engage warm contacts to improve positive signals.
• Start a domain health check using Mail-Tester to find where your domain stands. 

That’s it. These best practices will help you gradually scale your cold email outreach. 

TLDR: Here is What Should You Know

Personally, if you ask me how many cold emails I send daily or how many cold emails I send daily, here is what you should know. 

If you’re sending cold emails from a new domain, initially, you start with 20 to 50 emails per day. 

If you’re sending cold emails for a new domain with an established authority (you have warmed up your domain), you can send 50 to 100 emails daily. 

You must also follow these best practices when sending cold emails. 

• Build a high-quality email address list
• Clean and segment your email list
• Automate your email follow-up sequence
• Monitor the behavior of your email domain
• Gradually increase the size of your email domain and track your email results
• Upgrade your email infrastructure

Believe me, you don’t need to use different tools for your cold email outreach campaigns. 

You can try Saleshandy – an automated email outreach platform that helps you find quality leads, automate your cold email outreach campaigns, and even track results to get the best results. 

Try Saleshandy for free today. (No credit card required) 

FAQs About What is the Ideal Number of Sending Cold Emails

1. What tools can help me track and optimize my cold email send limits?

You can use tools like Saleshandy, Mailshake, and Reply.io to track how many emails you’re sending and how they’re doing. These tools let you automate follow-ups, so you don’t need to do everything manually. You get key numbers like open rates and reply rates that help you stay on track while doing cold emailing. 

2. How do I know if I’m sending too many cold emails and risking my sender’s reputation?

When you are sending too many cold emails in a short time, it can raise a chance of red flags from email service providers with trigger spam filters. To avoid getting into this trouble, you need to find a balance that helps to maintain momentum and get good engagement rates. Also, monitor your metrics, such as bounce, open, and unsubscribe rates. If all these metrics are negative, then it’s a sign that you’re sending too many emails that aren’t providing expected results and damaging your reputation. 

3. How do cold email limits differ for new domains versus established domains?

New domains have low trust and need a slow start (10-20 emails/day), gradually increasing. Established domains can handle higher volume (100-200 emails/day) but still need steady, gradual scaling to maintain reputation.