Inbox Protection is a warm-up and reputation maintenance feature available in Hunter as an All-in-One Outreach paid add-on.

It progressively builds your sender reputation by automatically sending emails and generating real replies, then continues to protect that reputation over time.

👉 Inbox Protection is available as a monthly and yearly subscription for email accounts connected to Email Sequences linked to All-in-One Outreach paid plans.

When you enable Inbox Protection on an email account, Hunter will:

Email providers like Gmail and Outlook constantly evaluate your sending behavior. A new or inactive email account has no established reputation, which means your emails are more likely to land in spam, get blocked outright, or filtered — even when well-written and relevant.

Warm-up solves this by creating a history of positive engagement (sends, opens, replies) before you start your outreach. This tells email providers your account is legitimate and trustworthy.

These are two different features that serve different purposes:

Inbox Protection is recommended for:

Go to the Email Account Center and click "View" on the email account you want to protect.

Once enabled, the warm-up begins automatically. Hunter progressively increases the volume of warm-up emails sent from your account, starting low and building up to approximately 30-40 emails per day with a 30% reply rate.

Once active, the Inbox Protection tab shows:

After the initial warm-up period (30 days), Inbox Protection does not stop. It automatically transitions into maintenance mode, continuing to send a controlled volume of emails and replies to keep your reputation healthy.

This is important because sender reputation is not permanent — it's constantly re-evaluated by email providers. If your sending activity fluctuates or you have a bad day where recipients mark your emails as spam, the ongoing warm-up activity helps offset the damage.

We recommend keeping Inbox Protection active for as long as you're using the account for outreach.

While Inbox Protection is actively warming up your account, your daily sending limit is set to 0 and sending in Sequences is locked. This ensures the warm-up is the primary activity on the account and protects your deliverability. Email accounts in warm-up status will appear greyed out in the sequence creation flow to prevent accidental selection.

Once warm-up completes and the account moves to "Protection Active" status, you can use it normally in Sequences.

If you need to send emails before the warm-up is complete, you can click "Unlock sending" in the email account profile tab under the daily sending limit section.

Before unlocking, Hunter will warn you:

"This email account is still warming up. Sending early can affect deliverability. If you continue, daily sending limits will stay low during warm-up."

If you've unlocked sending, your daily volume is capped at the current warm-up schedule value while warm-up is actively running. During a transient pause, that warm-up cap is lifted and your account's own daily sending limit applies — the warm-up cap resumes automatically when warm-up does.

Once warm-up completes and the account moves to "Protection Active" status, sending is automatically unlocked and you can use the account normally in Sequences.

You can cancel Inbox Protection by clicking "Disable protection" in the "Inbox Protection" tab of the email account profile. When you cancel:

If protection has already lapsed and the account is in "Limited" status, you can start a new subscription at any time from the "Inbox Protection" tab. This begins the warm-up process from scratch.

Inbox Protection can pause for two different reasons — and only one of them needs any action from you.

Some pauses are temporary — for example, hitting your email provider's daily sending limit. Hunter's warm-up engine detects these automatically and resumes sending once the underlying issue clears, usually the next day. You don't need to reconnect or take any action for a transient pause to resolve on its own.

A hard disconnect — for example, an expired authorization or a broken connection — is different and does need your input. If your email account shows a "Reconnection required" status in the Inbox Protection tab, you'll need to re-authorise the connection to resume warm-up activity.

To reconnect, open the Email Account Center, click "View" on the affected account, and go to the "Inbox Protection" tab. You'll see an option to reconnect directly from there — no need to go through the full setup again.

If you remove a connected email account that has an active Inbox Protection subscription and later reconnect the same email address on the same Hunter account, your paid period carries over. Re-enable Inbox Protection from the account's "Inbox Protection" tab before your current paid period ends and you won't be charged again — the existing cycle is applied automatically when you click "Enable".

During warm-up, you may notice emails with unfamiliar content appearing in your inbox. This is completely normal — these are automated warm-up emails sent as part of the process, and your account has not been compromised.

You can identify them by searching for WBX in your inbox subject line. To keep your inbox tidy, we recommend setting up a filter to automatically route these emails to a dedicated folder.

Warm-up emails will now be automatically moved to your chosen label and skip your main inbox. You can still access them at any time from the label in the left sidebar.

Warm-up emails will now be automatically moved to your chosen folder and won't clutter your main inbox.

Still stuck? Reach out to our team via chat or email anytime at contact@hunter.io.