Summary
Crowdsourced email sending services, exemplified by EW Collective, face significant skepticism within the email marketing community due to their inherent model of using shared or individual residential IP addresses for commercial sending. This approach creates an unpredictable sending environment where a sender's deliverability is highly vulnerable to the actions of other users on the same IP pool, often leading to a high risk of blacklisting and making it exceptionally difficult to build or maintain a positive sender reputation. Concerns specific to EW Collective include questions about its foundational legitimacy, potential violations of webmail provider terms of service, and the ethical implications for individuals who 'lease' their personal inboxes for email distribution, often without full transparency regarding the content sent.
Key findings
- Unstable IP Reputation: Crowdsourced services typically rely on shared IP pools or individual residential IPs, making deliverability highly unpredictable and susceptible to the poor sending practices of other users, leading to a high risk of blacklisting and difficulty in building a positive sender reputation.
- Questionable Business Legitimacy: Services like EW Collective face scrutiny regarding their fundamental business legitimacy, with concerns ranging from the existence of key personnel to operating models that appear to violate major webmail provider terms of service, making them difficult to consider a legitimate business.
- Exploitation of Personal IPs: EW Collective's model, involving the use of participants' personal home IP addresses for commercial email, is deemed highly problematic by mailbox providers and anti-spam organizations because it obscures the true sender and can lead to the blacklisting of residential IPs, potentially impacting the participants' own internet service.
- Association with Spam Tactics: The nature of crowdsourced sending is often linked to 'grey area' marketing tactics or bulk sending, raising significant concerns about its association with spam, which can severely harm a sender's long-term reputation and is viewed with skepticism by Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Key considerations
- Sender Reputation Risk: Evaluate the substantial long-term risk to your sender reputation, as you would have minimal control over the sending habits of others sharing the same IP addresses, which can lead to unpredictable deliverability.
- Compliance with TOS: Consider whether the service's model aligns with or violates the terms of service of major webmail providers, as non-compliance can lead to severe deliverability issues and account suspensions.
- Ethical and Transparency Concerns: Assess the ethical implications for participants whose personal inboxes and IP addresses are used for commercial sending, often without full transparency regarding email content or targeting, and the potential for their personal IPs to be blacklisted.
- Deliverability Control: Understand that using such services inherently removes your direct control over critical deliverability factors, making it challenging to diagnose issues or maintain a clean sending record with mailbox providers.
What email marketers say
12 marketer opinions
Crowdsourced email sending services like EW Collective are widely viewed with deep skepticism across the email marketing community, primarily due to their reliance on shared or residential IP addresses. This model fundamentally removes a marketer's control over their sender reputation, making deliverability highly unpredictable and prone to the negative actions of other users, thereby increasing the risk of blacklisting and long-term reputational harm. Such services are often associated with 'grey area' marketing tactics and are perceived by ISPs as attempting artificial manipulation rather than fostering organic sender trust, raising significant concerns about their legitimacy and suitability for any serious, sustainable email marketing efforts.
Key opinions
- Sender Disempowerment: Marketers using these services lose critical control over their IP reputation, becoming entirely reliant on the unknown sending habits of others on shared IPs, which complicates troubleshooting and maintaining a clean record.
- ISP Perception of Manipulation: ISPs and mail providers view rapid 'IP warming' via crowdsourcing with skepticism, often interpreting it as artificial manipulation of reputation rather than organic trust building, potentially leading to long-term deliverability issues.
- Underlying Business Credibility Issues: Beyond technical concerns, the legitimacy of certain services is questioned due to issues like non-existent key personnel and operating models that explicitly violate major webmail provider terms of service.
- Link to 'Grey Area' Marketing: Crowdsourced sending is frequently associated with risky 'grey area' marketing tactics or bulk sending, diminishing its credibility for legitimate marketers seeking sustainable deliverability and a positive sender reputation.
- Ethical Dilemmas for Participants: The practice of using participants' real inbox accounts and residential IPs for commercial sending raises ethical flags, especially if these individuals are 'seeded' onto lists with no clear opt-out, risking their personal IP blacklisting.
Key considerations
- Prioritizing Long-Term Reputation: Marketers must weigh the significant risk of irreversible damage to their sender reputation against any perceived short-term benefits, as these services offer minimal control over critical deliverability factors.
- Scrutinizing Business Practices: Exercise extreme caution and conduct extensive due diligence on the service's transparency, leadership, and operational compliance, given prevalent concerns about their legitimacy and adherence to webmail provider terms.
- Realistic IP Warming Expectations: Acknowledge that genuine IP warming requires a controlled, organic process to build sender trust with ISPs; crowdsourced methods are likely to be counterproductive, potentially leading to increased scrutiny and deliverability issues.
- Impact on Deliverability Troubleshooting: Understand that the shared and unpredictable nature of these services makes it exceedingly difficult to diagnose and resolve deliverability problems, as issues could stem from other users' actions rather than your own.
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks shares his initial reaction to EW Collective's website and raises concerns about its legitimacy, noting that the CEO mentioned does not appear to be a real person on LinkedIn, suggesting it might be a scam.
10 Mar 2023 - Email Geeks
Marketer view
Marketer from Email Geeks agrees that 1,000 email addresses are likely not enough for such a service and expresses interest in whether the method would work at all, and up to what volume, acknowledging its creativity.
8 Sep 2023 - Email Geeks
What the experts say
3 expert opinions
Expert analysis on crowdsourced email sending services like EW Collective reveals significant concerns about their legitimacy and operational integrity. These services operate by effectively 'leasing' residential IP addresses from individuals, which fundamentally obscures the true sender of commercial email. This practice is widely condemned by mailbox providers and anti-spam organizations because it facilitates a lack of transparency regarding email content and targeting, while simultaneously placing participants' personal IP addresses at a high risk of being flagged or blacklisted. Experts warn that this model is highly susceptible to exploitation by spammers, potentially leading to deliverability issues for the participants' own email and raising serious ethical dilemmas about unknowingly facilitating problematic messages.
Key opinions
- Obscured Sender Identity: Crowdsourced services effectively 'lease' residential IP addresses, obscuring the true sender of commercial emails, a practice highly problematic for mailbox providers and anti-spam organizations.
- Risk of IP Flagging: Participants' personal IP addresses are at risk of being flagged as spam sources, which can lead to deliverability issues for their own email and potentially impact their overall internet service.
- Lack of Content Transparency: Concerns exist about the lack of transparency regarding the content and targeting of emails sent through these services, raising ethical issues for both the service providers and the individuals participating.
- High Spam Abuse Potential: The model is deemed vulnerable to exploitation by spammers, who could leverage the distributed sending network to bypass traditional anti-spam measures, posing a significant threat to email ecosystem integrity.
- Speculated Use by Tech Giants: Some experts speculate that larger entities, including major tech companies, might use lesser-known services like EW Collective to gather email addresses or for other purposes that could result in recipients marking emails as spam.
Key considerations
- Participant IP Blacklisting: Individuals who 'lease' their home IP addresses for these services face a high risk of their personal IP being flagged or blacklisted by mailbox providers, potentially disrupting their own internet service and email deliverability.
- Ethical Transparency for Participants: The model presents ethical dilemmas for participants, who may be unaware of the specific commercial email content they are sending, raising concerns about their complicity in problematic or unwanted messages.
- Vulnerability to Spam Exploitation: The very nature of crowdsourced sending, which can obscure the true sender, makes these services highly susceptible to exploitation by spammers, thereby associating the entire practice with dubious tactics.
- Business Model Legitimacy: There are significant questions regarding the fundamental legitimacy and operational intent of these services, including speculation that they may be used for data gathering by larger entities or for practices that could encourage spam reports.
Expert view
Expert from Email Geeks suggests that companies like Google might use lesser-known entities to sign up for services like EW Collective to gather email addresses and questions if 1,000 addresses are sufficient. He also speculates that recipients might be advised to mark as spam if they receive more than paid for.
27 Mar 2024 - Email Geeks
Expert view
Expert from Spam Resource explains that EW Collective's model, where individuals install software to send email for clients, raises concerns about potential abuse. It highlights a lack of transparency regarding email content and targeting, and the risk of participants' IP addresses being flagged as spam sources, which could lead to deliverability issues for their personal email. The author suggests this model could be exploited by spammers.
7 Apr 2024 - Spam Resource
What the documentation says
5 technical articles
The inherent design of crowdsourced email sending services like EW Collective fundamentally conflicts with established principles of email deliverability. These services, by leveraging shared or dynamic IP addresses, introduce a high degree of unpredictability. Major email providers and anti-spam organizations consistently emphasize the importance of stable, positive IP reputation built over time through consistent, permission-based sending. Crowdsourced models, however, make a sender's deliverability exceptionally vulnerable to the sending practices of other users on the same shared pools, dramatically increasing the risk of blacklisting and making it virtually impossible to cultivate or maintain a strong, independent sender reputation.
Key findings
- Vulnerable IP Reputation: The shared nature of IPs in crowdsourced services means individual sender reputation is constantly at risk, directly influenced by the negative actions of other users, leading to unpredictable deliverability.
- Blacklisting Exposure: A single instance of spammy or abusive behavior from any user on a shared IP pool can lead to the blacklisting of that IP, subsequently impacting the deliverability of all associated senders.
- Contradiction to Best Practices: These services directly oppose widely accepted email deliverability best practices, which prioritize consistent sending volume, a stable sender reputation, and exclusive use of opt-in lists, as highlighted by Google, Microsoft, and Validity.
- Impeded Reputation Building: Building a stable, positive IP reputation is undermined by the rapidly changing or widely shared IP environments characteristic of crowdsourced services, preventing long-term trust with mailbox providers.
- Diagnostic Difficulty: The dynamic and shared nature of the sending infrastructure makes it extremely challenging for users to diagnose and resolve deliverability issues, as the root cause may lie with another user's activity.
Key considerations
- Shared Risk Environment: Understand that your email deliverability is intrinsically linked to the sending quality of every other user on the shared IP pool, exposing your campaigns to external, uncontrollable risks.
- Long-Term Deliverability Harm: Weigh the significant potential for long-term damage to your sending reputation, as the instability of shared IPs can lead to persistent deliverability challenges and an inability to reliably reach recipient inboxes.
- Alignment with Provider Guidelines: Assess whether employing such a service aligns with the stringent guidelines and best practices enforced by major email service providers and anti-spam entities, as non-compliance can result in severe penalties.
- Loss of Control: Recognize that using crowdsourced services means surrendering direct control over critical deliverability factors, making it difficult to implement proactive reputation management strategies or troubleshoot issues effectively.
Technical article
Documentation from SendGrid clarifies that while shared IP pools can be cost-effective for new senders, their reputation is directly influenced by the sending practices of all users on the pool, posing a significant risk of deliverability issues if other users send low-quality or unsolicited mail.
12 Nov 2024 - SendGrid Documentation
Technical article
Documentation from the Spamhaus Project emphasizes that IP reputation is a critical factor for deliverability and that shared IPs, commonly used in crowdsourced sending services, are at a higher risk of being blacklisted if even one user exhibits spammy or abusive behavior, impacting all associated senders.
20 Dec 2023 - Spamhaus Project
Are auto warming/deliverability improvement services for email marketing sketchy?
What are the issues with ESPs sending unsolicited marketing emails through other ESPs?
What are the potential issues with DuckDuckGo entering the email receiving and forwarding business?
What are the potential risks of sending emails to addresses scraped from public websites?
What are the risks and effectiveness of paying for email engagement metrics?
What is the general feeling about email verification companies?
