--- title: 'Zoho Cold Email Ban: What You Need to Know' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=FLHOVNTRzrU' video_id: 'FLHOVNTRzrU' date: 2026-07-14 duration_sec: 0 --- # Zoho Cold Email Ban: What You Need to Know > Source: [Zoho Cold Email Ban: What You Need to Know](https://youtube.com/watch?v=FLHOVNTRzrU) ## Summary Cold email expert Jesse Owlette joins Alex to discuss reports that Zoho is banning cold email or experiencing severe deliverability issues, particularly with Microsoft inboxes. The discussion covers the impact on users, potential causes, and what this means for the future of cold emailing. ### Key Points - **Zoho Banning Cold Email Reports** [00:00] — Reports indicate Zoho is banning cold email or Microsoft is blocking Zoho delivery, causing a mass exodus from the platform. - **Sharp Decrease in Responses** [01:30] — Alex noticed a sharp decrease in cold email responses from Zoho accounts, with valid emails being bounced back as blocked. - **Confirmation from Smartlead** [02:30] — Vapehav from Smartlead confirmed the same issue, seeing Zoho deliverability problems across tens of millions of cold emails daily. - **Zoho's Automation Edge** [03:30] — Zoho allowed full automation of inbox setup via API (27 steps), unlike Google which lacks DKIM automation, leading to manual errors. - **Cost Impact** [05:00] — Zoho costs ~$12/year per inbox vs Google Workspace at $7/month, so switching increases costs 7x or more. - **Zoho's Business Model** [06:30] — Zoho competes with Google in multiple areas; the ban could be a strategic move to clean up spam, but may hurt their email business. - **Uncertainty and Need for Statement** [08:00] — It's unclear if Zoho is banning cold email or Microsoft is blocking Zoho. A formal statement from Zoho is requested. - **Broader Implications** [09:30] — Email providers controlling traffic raises concerns about internet openness and the definition of spam. ### Conclusion Zoho cold email deliverability has collapsed, likely due to Microsoft blocks or Zoho's own policies. Users face higher costs switching to Google and uncertainty about the future of cold email on Zoho. ## Transcript us we have reports that Zoho is Banning cold email Zoho is one of the big three cold email senders you know there's Google there's Zoho and there's Outlook so if you're using Zoho you need to listen to this dire warning joining me today is cold email expert Jesse owlette to talk more about what we're seeing on Zoho Jesse yeah yeah no it's an interesting day I know I've been pushing you on this because it looked like it was happening earlier but it looks as though uh there's a lot of inboxes that are getting blocked at least this is what we're seeing on a lot of the social media groups that I'm in and you know the dark social groups that I'm in people are talking about this like it could be the end and you know obviously we're gonna have to wait for the the you know allegedly here we're gonna have to wait for the reporting to come out but it does seem like there is sort of a a mass Exodus happening on Zoho uh what what I am hearing Alex is it sounds like there's probably something to do with Microsoft like Microsoft's not letting any Zoho sort of delivery happen so that kind of caused it and you know we're still getting the reports here obviously there's a lot of analysis that needs to be done across all of uh inboxes out there but this could change the game and that dollar inbox you have it's probably not worth the dollar you have there now anyways right so I don't know this is one reason why I put off doing this stream for a while so we've been hearing reports on Zoho getting banned or cold emails getting blocked through Zoho for a while now um I put this off because we needed some real results but recently the last couple weeks I noticed a sharp decrease in our number of responses from our cold email campaigns and nothing else had changed until I asked my SARS what's going on uh are more people responding negatively are they out on vacation what's going on and she showed me a screenshot that was just like you've been blocked you've been blocked you've been blocked you've been blocked uh denials where basically emails that were previously valid you know run through never bounce completely valid emails are now getting bounced back only because they're using Zoho the Google ones are still going through fine and then yeah you were talking to vapehav who runs uh smart lead and he was reporting the exact same thing he's sending what tens of millions of cold emails a day uh through his platform and seeing the same thing with Zoho so it's scary um yeah it's dangerous and it's scary what do you think this means for the future of cold emailing uh well you know this is where things get really interesting and and I know a lot about inbox Automation and I'll tell you right now people can automate inbox automation on Zoho and they're not doing it on Google right if they're doing it on Google they're probably using RPA or something like that they're having they have to use a different system to do it because there's no way to automate the entire process on Google right now and this is where a lot of you'll you'll hear people talk about they're doing all this automation but they're not doing it right so I think Zoho you were able to do this right you could do an end to end I mean I've built an entire API that you can end to end in you know build your inbox perfectly uh and we're talking 27 steps of an or 27 API calls right I've you know I think I even said with you I mean you've seen it right so it's a lot of work but Google doesn't really have that capability there's a there is a piece of the functionality that you're not able to do they have not added D Kim dkim to their API yet it is not in there you are not able to automate that step so you you know there is that manual step and we all know what happens when things have to be done manually in today's age right people just don't do it right so this is where I think Soho had that edge a little bit people were automating it a lot more but this is going to cause a lot of uh changes in the way that people are buying inboxes I think uh you know the dollar and how many how many Zoho subscriptions um did people buy they had to pay for the whole year up front if you remember right yeah but how the a year of Zoho was what twelve dollars for inbox which yeah one month now on Google workspace is seven dollars per inbox per month so instead of paying 12 a year now imagine you have to pay seven times that per inbox I think it's fourth of that actually I think it's isn't it the 14th it's going into the 14s they're constantly raising the prices yeah and they're great and they're not grandfathering in the old pricing so if you're on the five dollar a month plan it does not matter you're going to seven you're going to nine and so our bills uh have already started skyrocketing with Google that was the whole benefit of Zoho right it was you get on Zoho you can yes register your emails in seconds because of the API calls and the way it's set up but two it was way way cheaper but unfortunately that opened up all of the spammers to come into Zoho and now zo has got to deal with this if I was Zoho though I would I wouldn't ban cold emails it sounds like that might be the the main driver of their business um what do you think kazooho right now seems to be on on a run dude they are competing head first with Google in multiple areas they've got their own version of Google docs they've got their own version of email sending like I I think this is a great step for Zoho what do you think is it the misstep I think it's an incredible company actually I mean I think the way that they've scaled and their business model and their culture and everything has just been amazing uh I'll we'll see how this goes I mean I don't know if this is going to cause like a you know I don't know if this will hurt like I don't know how they'll talk about this if they're going to talk about it in their earnings reports or anything like that uh I mean it's not necessarily probably the most important thing or however they report to the street but I do think that this is a big definitely will be a big uh you know sort of uh topic around and you know there's a lot of gr you know just from where their headquartered I mean Alex you know uh there's a a lot of the cold email Talent is actually in India and that's their world headquarters and you know I'm curious to find out how you know just you know the impact to the global economy and just everything there I mean maybe I'm stretching it here a little bit but I don't know I mean I think it's possible this could have a big impact and I wonder if this will change the way that people are learning how to cold email right I mean I don't know what are you seeing across the group that you're working with I'm seeing so I saw a major push towards Zoho let's let's do a quick rundown because we've got some people asking questions here what happened I just woke up so Soho uh shree is running a bunch of cold email campaigns using Zoho I know that for a fact and the reason why they're not connecting is because Zoho is Banning cold email or Microsoft is Banning Zoho from sending cold emails uh it's really not clear there hasn't been an announcement but what we are seeing from us from Jesse from people that we know you know grand total of maybe 100 million cold emails data points here uh Zoho deliverability is is done on Zoho it's very very hard if not impossible now to run a cold email campaign using Zoho that's what Nerf means Nerf means it used to be the most powerful cold email tool and now it's not worth anything um and it's not a cold email tool it's not like taking down limb list or instantly or Omni or something this is like taking down like a Gmail band called emails Zoho is on the way was on the way to becoming that big it looks to be that it's it's they're they're having trouble getting into Microsoft emails accounts what this could mean is as we all know you know AI is kind of the start of all you know I know the founders of Google have said you know AI cause Wars whatever you know win cause whatever but if you think about this this looks to be that you know According to some of the sources that we're hearing it from we don't have all the information this is still coming in it's still raw we will release it when we have more data but the data is good enough now and I know you were holding back on this a little bit till we had it but what we are seeing is that it looks like it's harder to get into the Microsoft email accounts from Zoho and that inboxing is very difficult like there's pretty much no way that that you're going to be able to land primary there it looks like they're just being blocked at a we just don't we're still seeing that uh like this group of email accounts and it's it's happening on a pretty large scale we're talking to some people who have significant Footprints uh I do not have a big footprint in Zoho I do have some accounts there that I use of course for cold email which is completely compliant with their terms and service in terms of service and I follow all the rules of every country that I work in uh just saying that for you know legal reasons but the point is is that I just really think that it's going to change because I think what's going to happen is you really have these major email providers and they're now controlling all the internet traffic and email was not meant to be like this right that's what's so bad about it is that we really shouldn't be seeing stuff like this right how does somebody know it is Spam like what is Spam to you what does that mean what is that definition and this is the kind of questioning I think we're going to see out there right now and I I really sort of nervous about it because I always thought email was an Internet Protocol right I never thought we'd ever be talking about a a single company or maybe it's not so maybe it's somebody not letting Zoho into their company right like a Microsoft because you're right Zoho has had major deliverability issues earlier this year they were they were also banned because they were running all of their sending servers through India and for a long time maybe the last decade until recently India was actually just a blacklisted country if you sent any email from India to an American company it would have gone directly to spam Google only recently changed that policy same with Microsoft in the last couple years so Zoho took advantage of that but then everybody came in and started spamming like like you're saying Milan here well the 150 Zoho inboxes SRI with 150 right like these aren't it's it's not uh to get on Zoho and to start sending massive amounts of emails like this is something we don't talk about a lot on these channels because I like to focus more on personalized cold emails but this is something that's going on if people are ramping up their email accounts Zoho was the move um SRI over here shifting shifting from 150 Soho emails to Google workspace uh if he's paying one dollar a month for Zoho what is that going to be that's uh you know over a thousand dollars now uh for 150 emails okay 150 emails times seven dollars yeah it's over a thousand dollars a month now email costs when it was very very little just you just Skyrock you just spent now you're spending six to seven times as much and you still gotta pay that you've already paid the funny thing is yeah you already paid Zoho it might not be them and I'd love to if we could Alex I mean I don't know if you know if you're in contact with any Executives over there on their email program or on their inbox team uh whatever the name of their their product is there I would love to hear from them if there is an official statement on this if they are no longer allowing uh cool email or if they're just Banning the accounts or like really what is the status right they've got your money are they refunding people I mean maybe that isn't the right ask I don't know it's just sort of an interesting thing that's going on and I really think it'd be great if they could make a statement on it on what their what what are their terms and services around this how are they uh how do they think of you know sort of this I'd love to get a sense I feel like a lot of these companies are a little bit of a black box on these email these email programs and I'd really like to understand like it is an Internet Protocol there is some sanctity in the whole like you know it's the it's the internet right it's Global everybody should have access to it right like that's kind of the point of it and it really shouldn't be controlled by any organization and I'm not saying is controlling it but there seems to be influence going around here and I'd love to hear from anybody who's on the inside if we have anybody that wants to give us some information on how they might be negotiating this with Microsoft with Google like are there are those providers kind of putting the pressure on Zoho because they're the smaller of the three you know there could be that too we don't really know totally but we are seeing massive reports of many cold email systems that are being sort of decommissioned or or however you want to uh you know almost like a bombs being dropped on them a little bit right I guess that's the uh and we'll keep these videos updated as we go uh if we hear back from Zoho we'll leave it there in the meantime let us know in the comments are you experiencing the same thing are you using Zoho how many inboxes are you using and how would this affect you let's uh let's talk about that going forward if you want to send cold emails use omni.us if you want to track your leads go ahead and check out Jesse's uh software called lead magic and we'll talk to you later let us know also in the comments if you like these very good news because I love doing this as well thanks for being here Jesse fun thanks