[ttul]

Hey everyone, CEO of MailChannels here. I've been following this thread with interest, as we've also observed similar challenges in the email delivery space. Well, to be honest, the ground game is constantly changing in this space as everyone has scaled.

Email delivery is inherently complex due to the various factors that contribute to deliverability, including IP reputation, domain reputation, content filtering, and recipient engagement. Shared IP pools can indeed be challenging because of the "bad neighbor" effect, where one sender's bad behavior can affect the reputation of all senders using that IP.

However, shared pools can also prove advantageous because it's harder for a receiver to block your IP if tons of email comes from it from a wide variety of senders. Receivers are trying to reduce collateral damage while protecting their users from spam and phishing - this is literally the reward model feeding their machine learning models. If your email travels alongside millions of other emails that are mostly received well, that IP will not be blocked; whereas, if you send email from your own IP, it doesn't take much for a receiver to pull the trigger and block you since there is very little consequence other than blocking your traffic.

Not that anyone here asked, but if you want a "best practice", try multiple different services and approaches and find the one that works best for you. There is no perfect email sending service for all senders and as mentioned above, the ground game is changing all the time.