Email Warmup in Vedain: How the Sending Ramp, Health Score and Auto-Pause Work

Why warmup changed

Until September 2026, Vedain warmed mailboxes through a peer-to-peer network: customer mailboxes sent generated emails to each other and automatically opened and replied to them. On 3 September 2026 Validity launched the Heatwave blocklist, which lists domains whose reputation was built on this kind of synthetic engagement. A listed domain can stop reaching inboxes, so we switched the network off rather than put your domain at risk.

Warmup in Vedain now builds reputation the way mailbox providers expect: real campaign email, sent in small but growing amounts, to people likely to engage, from a correctly set-up domain, to addresses that exist. Mailboxes that were in the old network were moved to the sending ramp automatically — you don't need to do anything. Old warmup emails from other companies still in your inbox can be deleted.

The five parts of warmup

1. Sending ramp — limits how many campaign emails a mailbox sends each day and raises the limit gradually.
2. Engaged contacts first — while a mailbox is ramping, people who already engage with you are emailed first.
3. Health score — checks your domain set-up, blocklists and bounce rate daily and tells you exactly what to fix.
4. Pre-send checks — warn you about content and list problems before a campaign starts.
5. Auto-pause — stops a campaign on its own if too many emails bounce or too many people unsubscribe.

Everything is on the Warmup page (Communication → Warmup) and in your campaigns.

Before you start: connect the mailbox you send from

Warmup works with Microsoft 365/Outlook, Google Workspace/Gmail and SMTP mailboxes. Connect the mailbox you send campaigns from in Settings → Email; it then appears on the Warmup page. If your organisation uses Microsoft 365 and connecting asks for administrator approval, Vedain shows an approval link to send to your IT admin — they approve once for the whole organisation.

For campaigns, use a mailbox on your own domain (you@yourcompany.com) rather than a personal gmail.com or outlook.com address. Personal addresses are authenticated by the provider, so their SPF, DKIM and DMARC are not yours to fix, and providers apply stricter limits to them.

1. The sending ramp

On the Warmup page, click Start ramp on the mailbox and choose a target — 100 emails a day by default. From then on, campaigns sending from that mailbox are limited to a daily amount that starts at 10 and grows about 30% a day until it reaches the target.

• •The card shows today's allowance, how many have been sent today, and around which day the target is reached.
• •Only campaign email counts. Your normal one-to-one emails are not limited.
• •The ramp is per mailbox, so each mailbox can have its own target — and you can choose a target above 100.
• •Turn the ramp off at any time and the mailbox returns to its normal daily limit.

How the ramp affects your campaigns

A campaign never sends more from a mailbox than that mailbox's allowance for the day; the rest wait for the next sending day. When you start a campaign, Vedain warns you if a mailbox is ramping and shows how many sending days the campaign will take at today's limits — 300 recipients on day 1 of a ramp takes about a week. If you need to send faster, spread the campaign across more ramped mailboxes rather than switching the ramp off.

2. Engaged contacts go first

While a mailbox is ramping, each day's campaign emails go first to recipients who opened or clicked one of your campaign emails, or replied to you, in the last 180 days. Everyone else follows a couple of minutes later, within the same day's allowance. Opens, clicks and replies from people who know you are the strongest positive signal a new mailbox can send, so the first days of a ramp are spent on them.

3. The health score

Each mailbox card shows a score from 0 to 100. Click Health to see every check, its result and the exact fix:

• •SPF — is your mail server allowed to send for your domain? (a failure costs 20 points)
• •DKIM — are your emails signed? (20)
• •DMARC — does your domain publish a policy? (20)
• •MX — can replies reach you? (5)
• •SURBL and URIBL — is your domain on a domain blocklist? (30 each)
• •Domain age — domains registered less than 30 days ago are flagged; keep the ramp target at 50 a day or less for the first month (10)
• •Bounce rate — campaign emails from this mailbox in the last 30 days: 2% or more is a warning, 5% or more fails, and fewer than 20 sends is too few to judge (25)

A warning costs 40% of a check's points. Results are reused for up to 6 hours; after fixing something, click Check again under the checks.

Daily checks and alerts

Every connected mailbox is re-checked once a day. You get a notification only when something gets worse: the domain lands on a blocklist it wasn't on before, or the score drops by 15 points or more. A problem you already know about is not re-announced every day.

4. Pre-send checks

When you start or resume a campaign, Vedain checks it and lists anything worth fixing before you confirm:

• •a sending mailbox with a low health score;
• •a subject that is mostly capitals, or has repeated “!” or “$”;
• •wording often filtered as spam, such as “act now”, “100% free”, “risk-free” or “click here”;
• •link shorteners like bit.ly, which hide the destination and are widely blocked;
• •more than five links in one email;
• •an email that is mostly images with very little text;
• •a missing unsubscribe link;
• •a link to a domain that is on a blocklist;
• •how many sending days the campaign needs at today's limits.

These are warnings — you can still go ahead — but each one is a common reason emails land in spam.

5. Clean your list before you send

Bounces are the fastest way to lose reputation. Before a campaign, remove addresses that bounced before, fix or remove obvious typos (gmial.com, outlok.com), and leave out old or bought lists and role inboxes like info@ you have never heard from.

6. Auto-pause

A running campaign pauses itself if 8% or more of its emails bounce once it has sent at least 30, or if 5% or more of recipients unsubscribe once it has sent at least 50. Counting starts again each time you start or resume the campaign, so a problem you have already fixed doesn't pause it again. The campaign owner is notified and the campaign shows why it paused. Before resuming, verify or clean the list (for bounces) or review who you are emailing and what you are saying (for unsubscribes).

A simple plan for a new mailbox

1. Day 0: connect the mailbox, open Health and fix anything red — SPF, DKIM and DMARC first. Verify your list.
2. Day 1: click Start ramp with a target of 100 (50 if the domain is under a month old) and start your first campaign to your warmest contacts.
3. Days 2–10: keep sending every working day — a ramp only builds reputation if the mailbox actually sends. Watch the health score and bounce rate.
4. After day 10: the mailbox is at its target. Keep verifying lists and keep auto-pause on.