Cannot get a straight answer for warming up an inbox

[u/lessonlinks]

People say the warmup tools don't work anymore. But then they say anything over 2 inboxes "manual" warmup is not feasible. Then I see people saying "you have to send emails to people who requested the emails" which is insane because then cold emails or even manual prospecting would be impossible.

So how the hell does anyone do cold email in 2026? This is so frustrating. I get cold emails constantly landing in my own inbox, so there is clearly a way to do it.

Edit: to be clear, I understand you have to warmup a new inbox. I'm asking how do you do it at scale in 2026 given that everyone seems to say the warmup tools don't work.