Transactional email APIs like Resend are built for application mail, not cold outbound. Using them for scaled outreach risks your domain reputation and guarantees poor deliverability.
Transactional email APIs like Resend are for opt-in mail. Using them for cold outbound often violates their ToS and burns domain reputation.
A proper email infrastructure platform manages domain rotation and inbox warmup automatically. An API just gives you a sending endpoint.
Sending 10k+ cold emails/month requires a dedicated infrastructure platform, not a script built on a transactional email service.
Deliverability for cold email depends on a pool of warmed-up inboxes, not the single IP address of a transactional email platform.
Building your own rotation and warmup logic on an API like Resend is rebuilding an infrastructure platform instead of focusing on sales.
Most technical teams looking to build an outbound function see an email API like Resend and think it's the perfect solution. It’s clean, developer-friendly, and seems like a straightforward way to send emails programmatically. This approach made sense when sending a few hundred emails from a single, high-reputation domain was viable.
In 2025, that model is fundamentally broken for cold outreach. Relying on a transactional email service provider (ESP) for scaled outbound is like using a Formula 1 car to haul gravel. It’s the wrong tool for the job. The problem isn't sending an email; it's managing the reputation of dozens of domains and inboxes, automating warmup, and ensuring deliverability at volume.
Transactional APIs are designed for opt-in, one-to-many communication from a single, trusted source. Cold email is a one-to-one communication problem scaled across a distributed, constantly monitored infrastructure. Confusing the two is the fastest way to burn your domains and land every email in spam.
The common, but flawed, approach starts in the engineering department. A developer is tasked with setting up an outbound system. They see a clean API from a service like Resend, SendGrid, or Postmark and get to work.
The setup usually looks like this:
This breaks, and it breaks catastrophically, for several reasons:
A modern outbound program treats sending as an infrastructure problem, not a simple API call. It's about building a resilient, distributed system designed specifically for the realities of cold outreach. This requires a completely different set of components.
The core pillars of an infrastructure-first approach are:
@getcompany.com, @trycompany.co, etc.) completely separate from your primary corporate domain. If one gets flagged, your core business is unaffected.kurtis@getcompany.com, kurt@getcompany.com). A platform should create, monitor, and warm these up automatically.Abstract concepts are useless. Here are concrete infrastructure stacks based on sending volume. The math assumes each inbox can safely send 25 cold emails per day, with another 25 emails reserved for automated warmup activities.
The Starter Stack:
1-2 dedicated domains, 3-5 inboxes, 75-125 cold emails/day (each inbox sends 25 cold + 25 warmup = 50 total/day) after a 2-3 week warmup. Ideal for teams testing outbound or sending under 100 emails per day while prioritizing safety.
The Growth Stack:
2-3 dedicated domains, 10-15 inboxes, 250-375 cold emails/day (each inbox sends 25 cold + 25 warmup = 50 total/day) after a 3-4 week warmup. For teams that have validated their messaging and need to scale volume for 1-3 SDRs.
The Agency / Enterprise Stack:
5+ dedicated domains, 25-50+ inboxes, 625-1,250+ cold emails/day (each inbox sends 25 cold + 25 warmup = 50 total/day) after a 4-6 week warmup. Built for agencies managing multiple client campaigns or enterprise teams with large SDR teams requiring isolated infrastructure.
Migrating from a fragile API-based setup to a robust infrastructure model should be done methodically.
Phase 1: Stop the Bleeding & Build the Foundation.
Immediately stop all cold sending from your primary domain. Purchase your first 3-5 sending domains and set up 10+ inboxes. Connect them to an infrastructure platform and begin the automated warmup process. For the next 3-4 weeks, your only goal is to build reputation without sending a single cold email.
Phase 2: Validate with a Control Group.
Take your single best-performing campaign and run it on the new, warmed-up infrastructure. Send at a low volume (200-300 emails/day). The goal is not to generate leads, but to establish a new deliverability baseline and confirm the system is working as expected.
Phase 3: Scale and Diversify.
Once you have a stable baseline, begin adding more domains and inboxes to scale your daily sending volume. Start migrating your other campaigns over to the new infrastructure. This is also the time to integrate multi-channel touchpoints like LinkedIn into your sequences, now that your email channel is secure.
A transactional email API like Resend provides a tool—an endpoint to send an email. It's powerful for what it does, but it does not provide a solution for the actual problem of cold outbound: infrastructure management.
Trying to build your own warmup, domain rotation, inbox health monitoring, and multi-channel sequencing on top of a simple email API is a massive engineering distraction. You'll spend months building a less reliable version of a tool that already exists, pulling developers away from your core product.
This is where a platform like SuperSend fits. It is not an alternative to Resend; it is the correct tool for a different job. SuperSend is the dedicated outbound infrastructure and execution layer. It handles the entire lifecycle of your sending assets—from domain setup and DNS configuration (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to automated warmup and scaled, multi-channel execution. It sits alongside your CRM and data providers, focused exclusively on ensuring your message gets delivered safely at scale.
Instead of wrestling with APIs not built for this purpose, you can focus on what matters: writing good copy and talking to prospects. Explore our sequence pages to see how robust infrastructure enables powerful outreach plays, or request a product tour to see the infrastructure management dashboard in action.
Join thousands of teams using SuperSend to transform their cold email campaigns and drive more revenue.