For a beginner doing cold email outreach, how many domains and email addresses per domain should I use, and what's a reasonable daily sending volume?
The creator recommends starting with 9‑12 mailboxes, which works out to roughly 30 emails per mailbox per day (270‑360 total). He suggests using about one domain for every three mailboxes, so 9‑12 mailboxes translates to 3‑4 domains. Domain registration costs around $5‑$10 each, and mailbox costs vary by provider—he mentions a 10% discount for Zapmail with code NYX. These are beginner guidelines from Maker School; you can increase volume if you’re not limited by resources.
With Instantly, pre‑warmed mailboxes run about $10 each and typically require 5‑6 domains for 15‑20 mailboxes. Warming up yourself with services like Zapmail costs roughly $3‑4 per mailbox per month, takes 2‑3 weeks to warm, and yields comparable daily sending volume (≈200‑1,000 emails/day).
Use a done-for-you mailbox provider; I recommend Zapmail (with affiliate code Nyx for 10% off). Get 9-12 mailboxes at about $3.50 each per month; with the discount that's roughly $33 total. Buy domains—one domain per three mailboxes—so about 3-4 domains at ~$10 each, adding ~$35. Set up Instantly: the $37 plan works if you're bottlenecked, bringing the total to about $105, leaving $15 for Make.com (or n8n) for personalization. You can also scrape leads for free using Apollo or Apify, then personalize them for a few dollars per thousand. Overall you can start with around $70.
I recommend using Apify to scrape leads, which provides Apollo scrape databases for about $150 to $2 per thousand leads. These lists have a high bounce rate, so run them through a verification tool like NeverBounce, Million Verifier, or Mail.so. After verification, you'll have around 1,000 emails costing $2 to $3. For sending, my go-to stack is Zap Mail at about $3 per mailbox per month. To send 1,000 emails a month, you need roughly two mailboxes, costing $5 to $10 monthly. Add a domain at $10 per year (~$1/month). So far, you're at about $10. Then you need a sending plan: Zap Mail's $37 or $39 per month plan brings the total to roughly $50 per month. If you want to scale beyond 1,000 emails a month, remember that cheap cold email only makes sense if you're sending sufficient volume; otherwise, reconsider the effort.
You cannot exceed about 30 emails per mailbox per day due to provider limits. To send 500 emails daily, divide 500 by 30, which gives roughly 16–17 mailboxes; you’re already using 18, so you can reach 540 emails per day. Therefore, the minimum per‑mailbox volume is 30 emails, and the overall capacity scales linearly with the number of mailboxes (mailboxes × 30). Your current results—236 emails sent, a ~2.6% reply rate (~six replies) and one meeting—are promising; scaling that volume will yield proportionally more replies and meetings.