Why managing your own email infrastructure matters

As the CEO of a multi-tenant SaaS, you live with a hidden risk that most email service providers ignore: your success is also your biggest vulnerability. You’ve meticulously built a platform that empowers thousands of end-users. But what happens when one of those users decides to send a phishing campaign? With a generic email provider, the answer is often catastrophic. Their systems see all your traffic as a single stream. They can't distinguish between your thousands of good customers and the one bad actor. The result? Your entire account gets flagged and suspended. Suddenly, your legitimate customers—the ones who rely on you for critical notifications, password resets, and communications—are dead in the water. This isn't just a technical glitch; it's a full-blown business crisis. It forces your engineering teams to drop everything to fight fires, triggers a flood of support tickets, and damages the trust you've worked so hard to build. With the average cost of a phishing breach soaring to millions of dollars, the stakes have never been higher. The fundamental problem is an architectural mismatch. Generic email infrastructure was not designed for the multi-tenant reality. It treats platforms as a monolith, creating a single point of failure where the actions of the few can silence the many. Platforms need an email strategy that mirrors their own business model: one that is inherently multi-tenant. This means having the intelligence to track reputation and behavior at the individual end-user level. It means having the granularity to surgically rate-limit or block a single bad actor in real-time—within seconds—without disrupting service for everyone else. At MailChannels, we've spent nearly two decades focused exclusively on this problem, even though everyone said we were fools to try. We believe that platform providers should never be punished for the actions of their users. Your email infrastructure should be your first line of defense, not your weakest link. Leaders of multi-tenant platforms: Have you been forced to divert your valuable resources to deal with email deliverability issues caused by your own customers? It's a conversation our industry needs to have. #EmailAPI #SaaS #PaaS #EmailDeliverability #MultiTenant #CyberSecurity #PhishingPrevention

Don't use a single company domain, instead use a multi-domain strategy. If you're only using one domain for all your B2B email communication, you'll inevitably get in trouble. Here's why: •Single point of failure: Your entire communication stack (invoices, investor updates, customer support) depends on one domain's reputation. •Lengthy recovery: If your domain gets flagged, you could face weeks or months of reduced deliverability while rebuilding your sender reputation. •Missed opportunities: During downtime, critical emails might land in spam folders, potentially costing you deals or important relationships. A more robust approach: -Domain diversification: Set up 2-3 email accounts per domain for different communication purposes (e.g., yourbrand.ai, your-brand.co).  -Admin panels: Set up multiple admin accounts per domain, don't put all your eggs in one basket here. -Warm-up protocol: Implement a 4-6 week warm-up for each new domain, gradually increasing send volume and monitoring key metrics like open rates and spam complaints. -Continuous monitoring: Set up alerts for sudden drops in open rates or increases in bounce rates. Tools like MxToolbox can help automate this process. Track this daily or weekly and watch it closely. -Fallback strategy: Always have at least one "fresh" email in reserve, warmed up and ready to deploy if issues arise with your primary domains. In B2B SaaS, your outbound email infrastructure (ie distribution channel) is as critical as your product. Treat it with the same level of strategic planning and redundancy.

The TikTok "Ban" Wake-Up Call: Why Email Infrastructure Matters The recent TikTok ban scare highlights a critical reality in the creator economy: platform dependency equals business risk. While the debate continues, the data already validates email as the stable foundation creators need. Email marketing ROI: $36-42 per $1 spent Average “real” email open rates: 21.5% Creator newsletter conversion rates: 3-5% Email list monthly churn: 0.1-0.5% Platform ownership: 100% creator-controlled Social media platform volatility impact: - TikTok ban threatens 170M+ U.S. users - TikTok algorithm changes affected 76% of creator reach - Instagram engagement dropped 44% post-updates - General social platform policy shifts displaced ~30% of content Email platforms offer infrastructure stability with nearly 100% uptime and complete data ownership. A creator charging 1,000 email subscribers just $50/year generates $50,000 in predictable annual revenue - significantly outperforming median social media monetization.  The owned infrastructure of email provides stability while social platforms face regulatory uncertainty and algorithms shift based on the whims of a company executive. Email isn't just a backup plan - it's the bedrock of sustainable creator businesses in an increasingly volatile digital landscape.

We spend over $35,000 per month on cold email infrastructure. Other agency owners think I'm insane. Truth is, most agencies treat infrastructure like any other expense they need to minimize. They'll use the cheapest resellers, group everything together to save costs, or try blackhat tactics to cut their monthly bill in half. I get it. When you see a $35k line item every month, your first instinct is to find ways to bring it down. But this is not a place you want to cheap out. When you do, your deliverability tanks, you start hitting restrictions and bans, and ultimately your client results suffer. The thing that's supposed to be saving you money ends up costing you way more in lost revenue. And to be clear, I learned this the hard way. Early on, I tried every cost-cutting trick in the book. Used sketchy resellers, bundled everything together, took risks I thought were worth it to keep our expenses low. It wasn't worth it. Not even close. The truth is, when you're running a lead gen agency, infrastructure is literally the backbone of your business. You need reliable email accounts, good deliverability, and systems that won't get shut down randomly. That's why we spend over $35,000 per month with Hypertide now. Because I know how important this piece actually is. And to be fair, we only have that high of a bill because of our client count. You by no means need to even spend 10% of that to get reliable infrastructure. My point, though, is that when your entire business depends on emails actually reaching inboxes, infrastructure isn't the place to cut corners. Your clients are paying you to get results. You can't deliver those results if your emails aren't getting delivered.

Landing in the inbox is as hard as explaining to your parents what you actually do for work. After looking at over 1,000,000 sent emails, we figured out what's working (as of today). 1. Infrastructure → The Foundation No shortcuts here. You need: → Proper authentication (MFA, oAuth) → Clean IP reputation (dedicated IPs, no shared pools) → Multiple domains for scale → Domain silos (separate workspaces) → Automated alerts for issues 2. Content Strategy → The Execution This is where most mess up: → Human-written copy (AI assists, never leads) → Consistent sending patterns → Lightning-fast reply times → Precise targeting (right person, right message) → Testing 3-5 verticals simultaneously 3. Monitoring → The Protection Your early warning system: → Daily deliverability checks → Spam trap monitoring → Engagement tracking → Domain health scoring → Performance alerts The truth about deliverability in 2025? It's not only about avoiding spam filters. It's about building infrastructure that lasts. Tech changes. Algorithms update. But solid infrastructure always wins. The companies hitting 95% inbox rates? They're not smarter. They're just more systematic.