6 Best Email Warm-Up Tools in 2025
Struggling with email deliverability? Email warm-up tools can help ensure your messages land in inboxes, not spam folders.
These tools simulate natural email activity, with the primary goal of improving your email sender reputation and boosting your email marketing ROI. Here’s a quick rundown of the best tools for small businesses:
A warm up campaign is a strategic process of gradually increasing email activity to build trust with email providers and improve deliverability.
- Warmforge: Affordable ($12/month), AI-driven automation, and actionable insights.
- Warmbox: Simple setup, starts at $15/month, uses 35,000+ inboxes for warm-up and leverages a large warm up network to enhance deliverability.
- Lemwarm: Industry-specific personalization, starting at $29/month per email.
- Reply: Combines email warm-up with multichannel outreach, priced at $49/month per user.
- Mailwarm: Premium option ($69/month), focuses on detailed deliverability metrics.
- Folderly: Advanced AI features, starting at $120/mailbox, ideal for larger teams.
Quick Comparison:
Whether you’re just starting or scaling up, choosing a reliable tool is crucial for consistent results. These tools can help improve your email deliverability and protect your sender reputation. Let’s dive into the details.
What is Email Warm-Up?
Email warm-up is the practice of sending a series of carefully timed emails from a new or previously unused email account to establish a positive sender reputation.
The goal is to show email service providers that your account is legitimate and trustworthy, which helps your emails land in the primary inbox instead of being filtered as spam.
Warm up tools and services automate this process by gradually increasing the volume and frequency of emails sent, mimicking natural email activity. This signals to service providers that your email account is being used by a real person or business, not a spammer.
As your sender reputation grows, your chances of achieving better inbox placement improve, making email warm up a crucial step for anyone looking to maximize the effectiveness of their email campaigns.
Benefits of Email Warm-Up
Warming up your email account offers a range of benefits that can significantly boost your email marketing and outreach results. The most important advantage is building a strong sender reputation, which is key to ensuring your emails are delivered to your recipients’ inboxes rather than being lost in spam folders.
A solid sender reputation means that email service providers are more likely to trust your messages, leading to higher deliverability rates and better engagement from your audience. By warming up your email, you also reduce the risk of your account being flagged for suspicious activity, which can happen if you suddenly start sending large volumes of emails from a new address.
For small businesses, warming up your email account is a simple yet powerful way to improve deliverability, increase open rates, and make sure your marketing efforts reach the right people. Using a reliable warm up tool or service helps you establish a strong sender reputation from the start, setting the stage for successful campaigns and long-term growth.
Why Warming Up Your Email Matters for Small Businesses
For small businesses, the difference between landing in the inbox or the spam folder can make or break an email campaign.
Warming up your email account is essential for building a strong sender reputation, which directly impacts your email deliverability.
A good warm up tool or email warm up service helps you avoid common pitfalls, such as being flagged as spam or having your emails ignored by your target audience.
By investing in the right email warm up tool, small businesses can ensure their messages reach the intended recipients, boost engagement, and drive more sales. A strong sender reputation not only improves deliverability but also builds trust with your audience, making it easier to grow your business through effective email marketing.
The Email Warm-Up Process Explained
The email warm-up process is straightforward but requires consistency and the right approach. Here’s how it typically works:
- Set up an email warm-up tool or service: Start by choosing a warm up tool or service that fits your business needs and budget.
- Connect your email account: Link your email account to the warm up tool, so it can manage the process automatically.
- Configure warm-up settings: Adjust the settings to control how many warm up emails are sent each day, how often they’re sent, and who receives them. This helps tailor the process to your target audience and goals.
- Send warm-up emails: The tool will begin sending warm up emails on your behalf, gradually increasing the volume to mimic natural activity and generate positive engagement.
- Monitor and adjust: Keep an eye on your sender reputation and deliverability metrics. Make adjustments to your warm up process as needed to ensure you’re getting the best results.
By following these steps and using a reliable email warm up tool, you can warm up your email account effectively, build a strong sender reputation, and improve deliverability. Regular monitoring and fine-tuning of your warm up process will help you maintain positive engagement with your target audience and maximize the impact of your email campaigns.
1. Warmforge
Warmforge is a full-service email warm-up platform designed with small businesses in mind. It offers the tools and insights needed to maintain high email deliverability rates over time, ensuring your emails actually reach their intended recipients. Warmforge helps you monitor account health, so you can proactively address issues and maintain a strong sender reputation. The platform features an automated warm up process to streamline email preparation, and its dashboard allows users to easily track key metrics and performance indicators.
Pricing
Warmforge keeps pricing straightforward, starting at $12 per mailbox per month. For those managing multiple accounts, bulk discounts can bring the cost down to just $3 per mailbox.
"For only $9 to warm up 10 accounts is a steal! The interface is clean and simple to navigate. If you have cold email accounts to warmup, this is a no-brainer deal to jump on." - info0744bPLUS, Verified purchaser, AppSumo
This pricing structure is particularly appealing for small businesses, offering flexibility to scale as outreach needs grow.
Automation Features
Warmforge doesn’t just save on costs - it also saves time. Its automation features handle the entire warm-up process, including sending, receiving, opening emails, and crafting human-like replies.
Warmforge provides customizable warm up options that let you tailor email volume, sender reputation, reply rate, and target audience to your specific business needs. You can also access advanced settings such as setting time zones, enabling or disabling weekend sending, adding custom signatures, and using unique email identifiers to further optimize your email deliverability and campaign strategy.
The platform uses AI-driven email generation to create unique content for every interaction. This mimics real email activity, signaling to email service providers that the accounts are genuine business users - not spam bots. To top it off, an automatic spam removal tool ensures that emails landing in spam folders are identified and handled, keeping the warm-up process effective.
One standout feature is the “Always-On Warm Up” option. This is perfect for businesses that send emails intermittently, as it keeps mailboxes ready for use without requiring a restart every time.
Deliverability Insights
Warmforge provides a dashboard packed with actionable insights to help users monitor their email performance. Metrics like inbox placement rates, reply rates, and unspam actions are all tracked, giving businesses a clear view of their email health. The platform also tracks positive interactions—such as emails being opened, marked as important, and replied to—which help sender reputation grow over time.
The heat score system is a game-changer. It shows when a mailbox is ready for cold email campaigns, recommending a target score of 85 to 100 for the best deliverability and aiming for maximum deliverability. This takes the uncertainty out of deciding when to start outreach and helps protect your sender reputation.
For added security, Warmforge includes continuous health checks. These monitor critical settings and blacklists, providing early warnings of potential issues. For small businesses without dedicated IT support, these automated checks are a lifesaver.
Warmforge has earned glowing reviews, with ratings of 4.9/5 on G24.8/5 on . Users frequently highlight its ease of use and affordability. While some have noted occasional bounce rate issues or slower customer support, the overwhelmingly positive feedback speaks to its reliability and effectiveness.
2. Warmbox
Warmbox is designed with small businesses in mind, focusing on simplicity and scalability. This AI-powered email warm-up tool uses a network of over 35,000 private inboxes to improve deliverability and minimize spam issues.
Warmbox also utilizes multiple IP addresses to further enhance deliverability and build trust with email service providers. During the warm-up process, Warmbox gradually increases sending volume to establish sender reputation and avoid spam filters.
Pricing
Warmbox offers four pricing options tailored to different business sizes and email needs:
The Solo plan, priced at $19 per month, is ideal for individual entrepreneurs or small businesses just beginning their email outreach efforts.
Automation Features
Powered by GPT-4, Warmbox automates the entire warm-up process, offering a significant advantage over the traditional method of warming up an email manually.
While manually warming up an email involves sending personalized emails to known contacts to gradually build reputation, Warmbox's automated warm up process personalizes emails and mimics real user behavior by opening, replying to, and flagging messages. Users can choose from various strategies - growth, flat, or random - and set schedules aligned with their outreach goals.
If an email lands in spam, Warmbox removes it and marks it as safe, ensuring a smoother path to the inbox.
Integration Capabilities
Warmbox supports popular email services like Gmail, Outlook 365, Yahoo Mail, Amazon SES, and any SMTP-compatible platform. This flexibility allows businesses to integrate Warmbox into their existing email setup with minimal effort. Its seamless integration also enhances the platform's ability to monitor and improve email performance.
Deliverability Insights
The platform includes an analytics dashboard that provides real-time metrics on open rates, reply rates, and spam rates. It also features deliverability tools to monitor inbox placement and account health, including IP and domain blacklist checks, DNS deliverability audits, and ongoing monitoring to identify and address potential issues early.
Additional tools, such as spam word checkers and inbox placement tests, help users optimize their email content and strategy.
Warmbox claims that businesses using its service have achieved a 98% email deliverability rate and improved sender reputation by 45%. Testimonials report a 70% boost in deliverability and a noticeable shift from spam folders to inboxes within just one month.
With a Product Hunt rating of 4.0/5 and a Sprout Score of 8.6/10, Warmbox has received positive feedback from users, though experiences may vary.
3. Lemwarm
Lemwarm blends automation with tailored personalization for different industries. As part of the lemlist ecosystem, it taps into a network of over 20,000 real users across 100+ countries to naturally boost your sender reputation. By engaging with real users, Lemwarm helps build the reputation of your email domain, ensuring better deliverability and trust in your outreach.
Pricing
Lemwarm offers two pricing plans to suit various business needs and budgets:
If you're already using lemlist, the Essential plan is included at no extra cost, and you'll get a $29 monthly discount on the Smart plan. You can save even more with quarterly (10% off) or yearly (20% off) billing options. These pricing options make Lemwarm a budget-friendly choice, especially for small businesses looking to scale their outreach with automation.
Automation Features
Lemwarm simplifies the email warm-up process by sending and receiving messages through its network of real accounts - steering clear of fake email addresses.
Its Smart Cluster technology takes things a step further by tailoring warm-up emails to your specific industry and email objectives. Lemwarm can also send longer warm up emails that mimic real user behavior, such as scrolling and link clicks, to send stronger signals to Email Service Providers (ESPs) and build trust. This warm-up phase typically lasts 3–4 weeks, during which open rates start at around 50%. With continued use, open rates can climb to as high as 80%.
“Warming up email address is the most underrated thing to do when approaching cold email outreach”, says Jimmy Ewins.
The platform also adjusts sending volumes automatically based on your domain’s performance, ensuring consistent engagement and maintaining a healthy sender reputation.
Integration Capabilities
Lemwarm integrates seamlessly with major email providers and supports protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. It also monitors sending volumes to avoid blacklist issues. While it's part of the lemlist ecosystem, Lemwarm works well with other email infrastructures, making it a flexible option for businesses with existing setups.
Deliverability Insights
Lemwarm doesn’t just stop at automation - it also provides real-time insights to help you maintain an optimal sender reputation. The platform offers daily reports on email performance, technical setup, and sender reputation. Its deliverability dashboard uses a three-stage score meter - Red (risk of blacklisting), Orange (warming up), and Green (optimal deliverability). A healthy score typically falls between 85 and 100.
The dashboard tracks key metrics like the number of emails sent and those rescued from spam folders. It also provides actionable tips to fix deliverability issues. Using a specific email template during the warm-up process can further improve deliverability and help build a strong sender reputation.
“Compared to other tools, I find lemwarm gives you a lot of control to decide how much risk to take with sending, which I like!” shares Harris Kenny.
Real-world results underscore Lemwarm’s effectiveness. For instance, Devlo improved open rates by 27% by following Lemwarm’s DNS check recommendations. RightMarket reached thousands of customers without hitting spam folders, and SalesCaptain doubled its Fortune 1000 client wins. Additionally, Lemwarm automatically corrects email misclassifications by providers and advises pausing campaigns when deliverability scores dip, safeguarding your long-term sender reputation.
4. Reply
Reply is a sales engagement platform designed to combine email warm-up with multichannel outreach. It supports cold outreach and cold emailing by improving deliverability, helping sales teams effectively reach prospects and increase response rates. Unlike tools that focus solely on email, Reply takes a broader approach by offering multiple ways to connect with prospects.
Pricing
Reply provides tiered pricing based on the number of active contacts:
Pricing is billed annually, and all plans include unlimited email warm-up. For businesses with larger contact lists, the Email Volume plan can scale up to 500,000 active contacts with custom pricing. Additional functionality is available through add-ons like LinkedIn automation ($69 per account) and calls & SMS ($29 per account).
Automation Features
Reply stands out with its automation capabilities, making outreach more efficient. The platform’s Deliverability Toolkit includes over 20 features for automated email warm-up and deliverability optimization. It also uses AI to suggest email content that avoids spam filters.
One of Reply’s key features is its multichannel sequences. These sequences allow businesses to connect with prospects through email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, SMS, and phone calls. By using Zapier, these channels are seamlessly integrated. The platform’s AI even selects the best communication channel for each prospect based on their behavior.
Another standout feature is AI-generated responses. These responses handle follow-ups, answer common questions, and even schedule meetings. The platform also helps optimize subject lines to improve open and reply rates, which is crucial for successful outreach. This is especially beneficial for small businesses looking to maintain consistent outreach without adding more staff.
Integration Capabilities
Reply integrates smoothly with major email providers, CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Copper, and personalization tools such as Hyperise, Vidyard, and Albacross. Users can connect these tools via API or no-code solutions like Zapier and Make.com. Additionally, Reply works with Calendly to simplify meeting scheduling, allowing prospects to book directly from email sequences.
This flexibility lets businesses create a tailored sales stack that fits their workflows and tools. The seamless integration not only supports campaign performance but also enhances deliverability.
Deliverability Insights
Reply’s deliverability suite, powered by Gmail API integration, keeps tabs on key metrics and provides actionable advice for campaigns. It tracks sender reputation and offers recommendations to maintain strong email performance. Monitoring your sender's reputation is crucial for successful email delivery and avoiding spam filters. Reply also helps protect your company's sender reputation by providing features that prevent harm during email campaigns. With consistent monitoring included in every plan, businesses can ensure long-term success in their outreach efforts.
5. Mailwarm
Mailwarm is a high-end email warm-up tool that utilizes over 1,000 email addresses to simulate real engagement, ultimately improving email deliverability. As a leading email warmup service and email warmup tool, Mailwarm offers automated solutions to help users enhance their sender reputation and achieve better inbox placement.
Pricing
Mailwarm offers three main pricing tiers tailored to businesses of varying sizes:
The Starter plan, priced at $69 per month with an annual subscription, positions Mailwarm as a premium solution. However, its feature set is designed to justify this cost.
Automation Features
Mailwarm emphasizes automation to maintain a strong sender reputation. Once configured, the platform runs autonomously, mimicking human email interactions by opening messages, starring key emails, and generating replies.
Mailwarm automates the entire warm up campaign by leveraging specialized warm up services, which optimize and manage the gradual increase of email activity to improve deliverability and reduce spam flagging. It also includes Auto Warmup Scheduling, which allows businesses to align warm-up activities with their typical email sending patterns.
Additionally, its blacklist monitoring feature keeps tabs on whether your email address appears on spam databases, offering peace of mind.
Integration Capabilities
Mailwarm integrates seamlessly with popular email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Constant Contact. This makes it easy to incorporate into existing workflows.
For businesses with custom systems, Mailwarm provides a real-time email validation API. This feature allows bulk email verification to remove invalid contacts before launching campaigns, helping to improve deliverability rates.
Deliverability Insights
Beyond automation and integrations, Mailwarm focuses heavily on deliverability metrics. It monitors bounce rates, spam rates, and other key indicators, alerting users to potential issues.
Mailwarm also features a safety net that automatically detects and helps prevent deliverability issues, such as spam threats and hard bounces, to protect your sender reputation. This is critical, as studies show that over 21% of legitimate emails fail to reach recipients’ inboxes.
If your email address is flagged on a blacklist, Mailwarm offers guidance to help resolve the issue and restore your reputation.
That said, user feedback on the platform is mixed. Mailwarm holds a G2 rating of 3.7/5 from 14 reviews. Some users have reported issues such as frequent bounces during the warm-up process and dissatisfaction with the quality of the generated warm-up emails and replies.
Despite these criticisms, Mailwarm’s focus on detailed deliverability monitoring and bulk email verification makes it a solid choice for businesses that value in-depth insights over budget-friendly options.
6. Folderly
Folderly combines AI-driven technology with human oversight to improve inbox delivery rates and campaign performance. As a contender for the best email warmup tool and best email warmup service, Folderly offers advanced features designed to enhance email reputation and ensure higher deliverability. This dual approach is reflected in its premium pricing, making it a tool aimed at businesses ready to invest in higher-level email deliverability solutions.
Pricing
Folderly's pricing is designed for businesses that prioritize performance. While the cost might be a hurdle for smaller companies, many users report that the benefits justify the investment. Here's how the pricing is structured:
Access to all Folderly features starts at $200 per month per user, with no free trial available. According to GetApp, users rate its value for money at 4.7/5, with many highlighting that the platform's performance improvements often offset its cost.
Automation Features
Folderly automates essential deliverability tasks while leveraging advanced AI analysis to go a step further. It focuses on optimizing factors like domain reputation and email authentication. The platform continuously monitors email infrastructure - covering DNS records, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC settings - allowing businesses to maintain strong deliverability without needing technical expertise. Folderly requires minimal technical skills to operate, making it accessible even for users without a technical background.
One standout feature is Auto Warmup Scheduling, which adapts to your sending habits to achieve a 96%+ inbox placement rate. Folderly also claims a 99.9% inbox placement rate, which is well above industry benchmarks.
Integration Capabilities
Folderly integrates smoothly with major email service providers, making it easy to incorporate into your existing systems. It also offers tools for team management and includes features like Inbox Insights to check email placement and DNS records, as well as Pulse for real-time monitoring of campaign and mailbox health.
Deliverability Insights
Folderly excels in its deliverability analytics, offering detailed insights powered by its proprietary Folderly Score.
This metric combines inbox placement rates, spam trigger detection, and email best practices into a single actionable score.
The built-in Template Editor identifies spam triggers in your email content and provides specific recommendations for improvement. Additionally, real-time sender reputation monitoring helps users address issues before they escalate.
Folderly’s approach to email warm ups includes automated tools that gradually increase sending volume, improve sender reputation, and optimize deliverability. Their process is designed to comply with email warmup legal standards, ensuring all warmup activities adhere to regulations like CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL, and that consent and privacy laws are respected.
With high ratings - 4.8/5 on G2 and Capterra, and 5.0/5 on TrustRadius - Folderly has earned strong user satisfaction. However, some users mention a steep learning curve and the higher price point as potential drawbacks.
For small businesses aiming to enhance both deliverability and revenue, Folderly provides actionable insights to maximize email performance. Considering that email marketing delivers an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent, the platform’s capabilities can offer worthwhile returns.
Pros and Cons Comparison
Here’s a closer look at the strengths and weaknesses of each tool:
When comparing these tools, it's important to note that their email warm up services vary in automation, effectiveness, and pricing. Some platforms offer advanced warmup emails and dedicated warmup tool features, while others focus on simplicity or integration.
The table highlights the essentials, but let’s break things down further, focusing on pricing, usability, scalability, and integrations. Choosing the right warmup tool is crucial for improving sender reputation and ensuring your emails land in the inbox, especially if you rely on automated email warm up services.
In terms of customer satisfaction, user feedback often emphasizes the effectiveness of warmup emails in boosting deliverability and reducing the risk of emails being flagged as spam.
Pricing and Value
When it comes to affordability, Warmforge leads the pack with pricing as low as $3 per mailbox for bulk users, making it a great option for growing businesses. On the other hand, tools like Folderly and are on the higher end of the spectrum, with costs that can quickly add up, especially for businesses managing multiple mailboxes. As Fabian Maume, CMO of Warmup Inbox, puts it:
"I always assess whether the software offers a good balance between features and pricing."
Ease of Use
User experience varies significantly across these tools. Warmforge and are noted for their straightforward interfaces, making them accessible even for beginners. In contrast, Folderly and Reply are more complex, which might deter smaller teams or those without dedicated IT support. As Maume explains:
"The first thing I look for is how intuitive the interface is. If it's hard to use, the team won't fully adopt it."
Scalability
Scalability is another key consideration. Warmforge stands out with its bulk pricing model, making it a cost-effective choice for businesses looking to scale. In contrast, tools like Lemwarm and Folderly can become prohibitively expensive as mailbox numbers grow, which may not be ideal for startups or small businesses.
Features and Integrations
The range of features varies widely. Tools like Warmbox and Mailwarm focus on the basics of email warm-up, which can suffice for many small businesses. On the other hand, Folderly offers advanced AI analysis and deliverability insights, appealing to those needing deeper functionality. Meanwhile, Reply excels in integration, offering seamless connections with outreach and CRM tools, and also supports warming up Gmail accounts, making it a strong choice for teams seeking a more comprehensive solution.
Customer Satisfaction
Interestingly, customer reviews don't always align with pricing. Warmforge, despite being one of the most affordable options, boasts an impressive 4.9/5 rating on G2. Premium tools sometimes receive lower scores due to their complexity and higher costs, which can alienate users looking for straightforward solutions.
For small businesses, the key is finding the right balance between functionality and affordability. Aligning tool capabilities with specific business needs ensures efficiency without overspending.
Final Recommendation
When it comes to finding the best email warm-up tool for small businesses, Warmforge stands out as the clear winner.
Warmforge is designed with small businesses in mind, offering an automated warm-up process that mimics natural email behavior.
Whether you're just starting out or scaling up, Warmforge’s AI-driven platform takes the guesswork out of email deliverability.
It offers customizable warm-up options that let you tailor your campaigns to fit your unique needs, while advanced features like spam removal and continuous health checks keep your email accounts in top shape.
Starting at just $12 per mailbox per month, with bulk discounts that can bring the cost down to as low as $3 per mailbox, it’s an unbeatable value for businesses watching their budgets. Plus, with a heat score system that clearly indicates when your mailbox is ready for cold outreach, you can confidently launch your campaigns without worrying about deliverability issues.
With Warmforge, you’re not just buying a tool—you’re investing in peace of mind, knowing your emails will reach the right audience, every time.
Start your journey to better email deliverability today with Warmforge and watch your email campaigns thrive.