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Some teams think they can solve infrastructure problems by using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 accounts – essentially piggybacking on Google’s or Microsoft’s IP reputation and domain infrastructure.
On the surface, it seems logical. Those platforms have incredible IP reputation. Their infrastructure is proven. Why not just use it?
Because the problem gets shifted, not solved.
IP Management Becomes Abstracted and Uncontrollable
When you send through Google or Microsoft infrastructure, you don’t control the IPs. You don’t know what IP your email goes out from. You don’t know what other traffic shares that IP. You can’t monitor IP performance or reputation. This is the fundamental problem.
Let’s play out a scenario: You’re using Google Workspace to send cold emails. Your bounce rate suddenly spikes noticeably. What’s causing it? Is it your sending patterns? Your list quality? Your content? The IP reputation? You have no idea. Google doesn’t tell you what IP you’re sending from. You can’t monitor that IP’s reputation independently. You’re blind to the infrastructure layer. Google’s support response is “we’re monitoring your account” and nothing else. You’re stuck.
This matters for cold outreach. If your email is getting rejected, you have limited ability to diagnose why or fix it. The IP reputation issue might be on your end or it might be from other users of the same infrastructure. You have no visibility and no control. You can’t do anything about it except wait.
Compare that to managed infrastructure where you know exactly what IP each email sends from, you can monitor its performance, and if it underperforms you can replace it immediately. You have diagnostics. You have agency. You can fix things.
Domain Reputation Burden Doesn’t Disappear
Even if you’re sending through Google or Microsoft infrastructure, you still need a domain for the email address. Sending from an account like “team@company.com” means company.com is the sender domain, not Google’s. You haven’t escaped the reputation problem. You’ve just hidden one part of it.
ISPs don’t care what IP infrastructure you route through. They care about the From address. If company.com is new or has poor reputation, that’s what gets evaluated. You’ve just shifted the problem from IP reputation to domain reputation. Your new domain sending cold emails still gets filtered. Google’s IP doesn’t change that.
And now you’re managing domain reputation while having no control over the IP reputation piece. That’s a worse position than managing the whole stack. You can’t audit your IPs. You can’t optimize them. You can’t replace a degraded IP. You’re left managing domain reputation problems without being able to manage the infrastructure that supports them. That’s like trying to fix a car’s transmission while not being allowed to look under the hood.
Reseller Shutdowns Create Existential Risk
Google and Microsoft have terms of service. They prohibit certain sending practices. If they determine you’re violating their policy – even if you’re not actually spamming, just approaching a threshold they set – they can shut down your account. This isn’t theoretical. It happens regularly.
Real example: A company is using Google Workspace to send legitimate B2B cold emails. They’re hitting high daily send volumes. Google’s automated system flags their account as violating terms of service (they’re vague about what exactly). Account suspended. No warning. No appeal process. The company loses all email capability overnight. They have no one to call, no way to contest the decision, no option to explain their use case. They’re dead.
When that happens, you lose your infrastructure overnight. All your email addresses, your sending capability, everything. You have limited recourse and no appeal process for edge cases. You’re entirely at the mercy of their automated systems and their support team’s interpretation of vague policies.
With managed infrastructure, you own the setup. We handle the technical side, but you control the relationship and the terms. You’re not one policy change away from losing your entire email capability. Your infrastructure relationship is documented in a service agreement, not subject to third-party terms of service.
This is especially critical for teams doing legitimate cold outreach. Google and Microsoft have been increasingly restrictive about cold email practices. They’re tightening policies and being more aggressive about enforcement. Using their infrastructure for serious cold outreach is operating under perpetual risk of shutdown. You’re doing nothing wrong, but you’re still at risk.
Identity Sprawl and Operational Risk
When you use Google or Microsoft infrastructure, you’re also pulling in their entire identity and security model. Multi-factor authentication, recovery accounts, device management, all of it. You can’t separate the email sending function from the identity function. They’re entangled.
If you’re using dozens of accounts to scale sending, you’re managing dozens of identities. That creates security complexity, operational burden, and management overhead. Each Google Workspace account is a potential security risk. Each one has recovery procedures, device approvals, and authentication chains. Multiply that by 10 accounts for scaling and you’re managing 10 identity systems.
Here’s the practical issue: Your team member leaves. They had access to three Google Workspace accounts used for cold email. Now you have to recover those accounts, change passwords, and ensure security by auditing what they accessed. Multiply that by 20 people managing sending and you have constant identity management chaos.
Managed infrastructure keeps your email sending separate from your corporate identity management. You don’t have multiple Google Workspace accounts to manage. You have one relationship with infrastructure that handles the technical side. Identity remains in your corporate system where it belongs.
For teams in regulated industries, this separation is essential. You can’t have email accounts that live inside your corporate identity management system mixed with high-volume outreach sending. Operational integrity requires clear separation. Managed infrastructure solves this by keeping sending completely separate from your identity layer.
We’d love to learn more about your business, email deliverability and outreach goals, and see if we might be able to help.
Whether you have questions about what we do, how Protocol works, or you’d just like to pick our brains on some of our best practices, we’d be happy to chat.
Schedule a call with our Revenue Director, Chrisley Ceme.
Some teams think they can solve infrastructure problems by using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 accounts – essentially piggybacking on Google’s or Microsoft’s IP reputation and domain infrastructure.
On the surface, it seems logical. Those platforms have incredible IP reputation. Their infrastructure is proven. Why not just use it?
Because the problem gets shifted, not solved.
IP Management Becomes Abstracted and Uncontrollable
When you send through Google or Microsoft infrastructure, you don’t control the IPs. You don’t know what IP your email goes out from. You don’t know what other traffic shares that IP. You can’t monitor IP performance or reputation. This is the fundamental problem.
Let’s play out a scenario: You’re using Google Workspace to send cold emails. Your bounce rate suddenly spikes noticeably. What’s causing it? Is it your sending patterns? Your list quality? Your content? The IP reputation? You have no idea. Google doesn’t tell you what IP you’re sending from. You can’t monitor that IP’s reputation independently. You’re blind to the infrastructure layer. Google’s support response is “we’re monitoring your account” and nothing else. You’re stuck.
This matters for cold outreach. If your email is getting rejected, you have limited ability to diagnose why or fix it. The IP reputation issue might be on your end or it might be from other users of the same infrastructure. You have no visibility and no control. You can’t do anything about it except wait.
Compare that to managed infrastructure where you know exactly what IP each email sends from, you can monitor its performance, and if it underperforms you can replace it immediately. You have diagnostics. You have agency. You can fix things.
Domain Reputation Burden Doesn’t Disappear
Even if you’re sending through Google or Microsoft infrastructure, you still need a domain for the email address. Sending from an account like “team@company.com” means company.com is the sender domain, not Google’s. You haven’t escaped the reputation problem. You’ve just hidden one part of it.
ISPs don’t care what IP infrastructure you route through. They care about the From address. If company.com is new or has poor reputation, that’s what gets evaluated. You’ve just shifted the problem from IP reputation to domain reputation. Your new domain sending cold emails still gets filtered. Google’s IP doesn’t change that.
And now you’re managing domain reputation while having no control over the IP reputation piece. That’s a worse position than managing the whole stack. You can’t audit your IPs. You can’t optimize them. You can’t replace a degraded IP. You’re left managing domain reputation problems without being able to manage the infrastructure that supports them. That’s like trying to fix a car’s transmission while not being allowed to look under the hood.
Reseller Shutdowns Create Existential Risk
Google and Microsoft have terms of service. They prohibit certain sending practices. If they determine you’re violating their policy – even if you’re not actually spamming, just approaching a threshold they set – they can shut down your account. This isn’t theoretical. It happens regularly.
Real example: A company is using Google Workspace to send legitimate B2B cold emails. They’re hitting high daily send volumes. Google’s automated system flags their account as violating terms of service (they’re vague about what exactly). Account suspended. No warning. No appeal process. The company loses all email capability overnight. They have no one to call, no way to contest the decision, no option to explain their use case. They’re dead.
When that happens, you lose your infrastructure overnight. All your email addresses, your sending capability, everything. You have limited recourse and no appeal process for edge cases. You’re entirely at the mercy of their automated systems and their support team’s interpretation of vague policies.
With managed infrastructure, you own the setup. We handle the technical side, but you control the relationship and the terms. You’re not one policy change away from losing your entire email capability. Your infrastructure relationship is documented in a service agreement, not subject to third-party terms of service.
This is especially critical for teams doing legitimate cold outreach. Google and Microsoft have been increasingly restrictive about cold email practices. They’re tightening policies and being more aggressive about enforcement. Using their infrastructure for serious cold outreach is operating under perpetual risk of shutdown. You’re doing nothing wrong, but you’re still at risk.
Identity Sprawl and Operational Risk
When you use Google or Microsoft infrastructure, you’re also pulling in their entire identity and security model. Multi-factor authentication, recovery accounts, device management, all of it. You can’t separate the email sending function from the identity function. They’re entangled.
If you’re using dozens of accounts to scale sending, you’re managing dozens of identities. That creates security complexity, operational burden, and management overhead. Each Google Workspace account is a potential security risk. Each one has recovery procedures, device approvals, and authentication chains. Multiply that by 10 accounts for scaling and you’re managing 10 identity systems.
Here’s the practical issue: Your team member leaves. They had access to three Google Workspace accounts used for cold email. Now you have to recover those accounts, change passwords, and ensure security by auditing what they accessed. Multiply that by 20 people managing sending and you have constant identity management chaos.
Managed infrastructure keeps your email sending separate from your corporate identity management. You don’t have multiple Google Workspace accounts to manage. You have one relationship with infrastructure that handles the technical side. Identity remains in your corporate system where it belongs.
For teams in regulated industries, this separation is essential. You can’t have email accounts that live inside your corporate identity management system mixed with high-volume outreach sending. Operational integrity requires clear separation. Managed infrastructure solves this by keeping sending completely separate from your identity layer.
Our Revenue Director, Chrisley Ceme, is leading the Triggered Outbound program.Chrisley’s gone deep on this strategy and can walk you through:
- How Triggered Outbound fits with your outbound goals
- What triggers are available (and what’s possible within our platform)
- Pricing, onboarding, and getting started
