Funny thing that LLMs have different opinion on this:
Sonnet 4.6:
For 50 manual personalized emails/day — yes, still use a separate domain. Here's why:
- If your product_io gets flagged/blacklisted, you lose everything — transactional emails, support, investor communication
- Even manual, personalized emails can trigger spam reports. Some recipients just hit "spam" instead of "unsubscribe" or ignoring
- 50/day is ~1000+/month. It only takes a small % of spam reports to hurt your domain reputation
- Recovering a burned domain takes months
ChatGPT 5.2:
This advice exists for a reason, but it is often misunderstood and over-applied. In your situation, it is usually the wrong move. Let me explain clearly, without "growth hacker" myths.Why people recommend a second domain? People who send thousands of cold emails per week use burner domains because:
- they expect spam complaints
- they accept low personalization
- they rotate domains constantly
- they treat email as a volume channel
For them, reputation damage is inevitable, so they isolate it. That is not your situation.You are doing: low volume, highly personalized, peer-to-peer outreach, to founders, with manual onboarding. This is relationship building, not "cold email marketing". Using a throwaway domain here sends the wrong signal.
brushfoot•1h ago
Your cold-outreach emails will be flagged as spam by some people, even if they comply with CAN-SPAM. And you should comply with it by having a clear opt-out mechanism and your physical address in the footer, but some people will flag your emails regardless.
I've had this happen in my startup. It hurt the deliverability of our transactional emails (notifications etc.). I'd go with a separate domain if I had to do it over.