How to Connect Email Accounts to Instantly the Right Way

Connecting an inbox to Instantly takes about two minutes. Getting that inbox to actually land in someone's primary tab takes considerably longer, and the order you do things in decides the outcome. Most of the people who end up in spam did the connection correctly and skipped everything that comes before it.

This walkthrough covers the whole setup in the order that works: domains and DNS first, then the connection itself, then the tracking domain, then the checks that tell you whether it worked. Where Instantly's documentation is specific, this guide is specific. Where it is not, this guide says so rather than guessing.

The first decision happens before you open Instantly at all. Instantly's own cold email strategy article recommends buying secondary domains for outreach rather than sending from your primary company domain, and connecting three to five accounts per domain. The reasoning is containment: if a sending domain picks up a reputation problem, your main domain and your real business email are untouched.

What do you need in place before you connect anything?

You need a sending domain with four DNS records published: MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Instantly's cold email strategy documentation lists all four as required setup, and their deliverability writing is blunt about why. Without valid SPF and DKIM plus a DMARC policy, your odds of reaching the primary inbox drop sharply, whatever tool you send with.

These are not Instantly-specific requirements. They are the baseline that Gmail and Outlook now enforce for bulk senders, and they belong to your domain rather than to any sending platform. Publish them once per domain and they keep working no matter what you send with later.

Instantly's guidance on DMARC is to start with a policy of p=none, which is monitor mode and takes no delivery action, then move to quarantine and finally reject once you can see which senders are legitimate. Gmail's bulk sender rules accept p=none, so you are compliant from day one and can tighten later without breaking your own mail.

Two details catch people out. At least one of SPF or DKIM has to pass and align with the visible From domain, so a DKIM record that exists but signs a different domain does not help you. And SPF allows a maximum of ten DNS-querying mechanisms, so a record that chains too many include statements returns an error and breaks alignment entirely.

How do you connect a Google Workspace account?

Go to Email Accounts, click Add New, then Connect existing accounts, and choose Google. Instantly documents two routes: OAuth, which their help centre describes as the Workspace method and involves approving Instantly's client ID in the Google Admin console, and an app password, which their help centre describes as the option for personal Gmail.

The app password route has a prerequisite. You have to switch on two-step verification on the Google account first, because Google only offers app passwords once 2FA is active. Instantly's documentation notes that as of January 2025 IMAP is enabled in Gmail automatically and can no longer be toggled, so that old step has quietly disappeared.

Connecting a Google account with an app password

1. Turn on two-step verification in Google — In the Google account Security tab, open two-step verification and complete the setup, including confirming the code sent to your phone. App passwords are not offered until this is active.
2. Generate the app password — Search your Google account for App Password. Choose Mail as the application and Other (Custom) as the device, give it a name you will recognise, then click Generate. Copy the password before you close the dialog, because Google will not show it again.
3. Open Add New in Instantly — From the Email Accounts tab, select Add New, then Connect existing accounts, then the Gmail or GSuite option, then the app password option.
4. Fill in the account details and connect — Enter the address and the app password you generated, then click Connect. Instantly's documentation notes that each Google account has to be connected individually, even when several belong to the same workspace.
5. Confirm the account is not in an error state — Back on the Email Accounts dashboard, check the account does not carry a Sending Error, Disconnected or DNS error badge. Fix any of those before you attach the account to a campaign.

For Microsoft, Instantly's documentation is explicit that Outlook accounts must be connected individually through the Microsoft connector using OAuth, and cannot be bulk imported. Their quick start guide also notes that SMTP access needs to be enabled on the Microsoft side before the connection will complete.

What about providers that are not Google or Microsoft?

Everything else connects through the Other provider option using IMAP and SMTP together. Instantly's documentation is unambiguous here: both protocols have to be configured, and connecting with SMTP alone is not permitted, because IMAP is what the platform uses for reply detection and for the warmup process.

That single rule explains a lot of confused support tickets. If you connect a transactional sending service that only offers SMTP, Instantly cannot read the mailbox, so it cannot see replies, cannot stop follow-ups when someone answers, and cannot run warmup. The IMAP requirement is not bureaucracy, it is how half the product works.

If you are bringing in a batch of inboxes at once, the IMAP and SMTP path also offers a bulk import from CSV. This is the practical way to onboard fifteen or thirty mailboxes without clicking through the same form thirty times. Google and Microsoft accounts do not get this shortcut, which is worth factoring into how long your setup afternoon will actually take.

Do you need a custom tracking domain?

If you plan to use open or link tracking, yes. Instantly's quick start guide describes adding a CNAME record in your domain's DNS panel with the host inst pointing at prox.itrackly.com, then enabling the custom tracking domain setting in Email Accounts, entering your domain, and clicking Check Status to verify it.

Their documentation notes that DNS propagation can take 24 to 72 hours, so this is a job for the same afternoon you buy the domains, not the morning you want to launch. Without your own tracking domain, tracked links point at a shared host that other senders also use, which is a reputation you do not control.

The setup work nobody enjoys

Add it up honestly. Buy secondary domains, point DNS at a mail provider, publish four record types per domain, create three to five mailboxes per domain, generate an app password for each Google account, connect each one individually, add a CNAME for tracking, wait up to 72 hours for propagation, then wait roughly two more weeks for warmup before you send anything real.

None of that is Instantly's fault. It is the cost of sending cold email at volume in a world where mailbox providers assume you are a spammer until you prove otherwise, and Instantly's documentation is more honest about the work than most tools in the category. But it is genuinely a project, and it is worth knowing that going in.

Set-up work like this is exactly what we removed at Sistava. Rather than wiring infrastructure and then testing whether it holds, you hire an AI Employee and tell it in plain English what you want handled. It has its tools connected already, it asks you when it is unsure, and it sets itself up. There is no DNS afternoon before you get to the work.

Limits and gotchas worth knowing before you start

• SMTP alone will not connect. Instantly's documentation requires both IMAP and SMTP, because IMAP powers reply detection and warmup. Check your provider offers IMAP before you buy the mailboxes.
• Google and Microsoft accounts connect one at a time. Only the IMAP and SMTP route offers bulk import from CSV. Their documentation states each Google account must be connected individually even within one workspace.
• DNS propagation is measured in days. Instantly's guide allows 24 to 72 hours for the tracking CNAME. Plan the DNS work well ahead of your launch date.
• SPF has a hard lookup ceiling. Ten DNS-querying mechanisms is the RFC limit. Go past it and the record errors out, which breaks DMARC alignment even though the record still looks fine to the eye.
• Connected is not the same as ready. Instantly's own strategy documentation recommends at least two weeks of warmup before campaigns, unless you are using accounts that were pre-warmed.
• Your legal obligations are yours. Instantly's own writing on the subject notes CAN-SPAM requires accurate headers, a valid physical postal address, a working opt-out and honouring removals within ten business days, while the GDPR requires a lawful basis before you email anyone in the EU. The sending tool does not carry that responsibility for you.

Sources

• Instantly Help Center, How to connect your email accounts to Instantly
• Instantly Help Center, Connecting Google accounts via the app password method
• Instantly Help Center, Quick start guide, all in one
• Instantly Help Center, Instantly cold email strategy
• Instantly Help Center, Getting started with the Email Accounts dashboard
• Instantly blog, SPF, DKIM and DMARC for deliverability
• Instantly blog, Legal requirements for follow-up emails