Inboxes for Smartlead

Most people reading this run Smartlead for more than one client. The feature that makes that workable is the client workspace, and the risk that makes it dangerous is shared infrastructure: one mailbox sending for two clients, one domain with inboxes in two workspaces, one tracking domain under everybody. When a client hands you a scraped list and bounces climb on Tuesday, what decides whether anyone else notices on Thursday is whether that client’s sending ever touched a domain another client depends on.

We are not here to review Smartlead; we are a Smartlead Partner on the infrastructure side and we sell the mailboxes, not the seats. What we can say precisely is how to lay the fleet out underneath it so that isolation is real rather than a workspace name.

On our side this is one order per client, in a folder named for them. The portal and the API can both name the Smartlead workspace an order exports into, so a new client is a new folder, a new order and a new workspace, with nothing in common with the last one. The agency data article covers the reporting side of the same separation.

• Real mailboxes on a licensed tenant. Every inbox we deliver is an official Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or Azure mailbox with you as admin, not a relay or an alias. Smartlead connects to it the way it connects to any business mailbox.
• Authentication already published. SPF, DKIM, DMARC and forwarding are set before handover. Confirm it with the authentication checker rather than trusting it; the check takes a minute and the alternative is a quiet campaign.
• A Smartlead login saved, if you want us to load them. The export needs your Smartlead login and the workspace to land in. Save it once in the portal under sequencer keys; it is used for every export after that and never shown back.
• Two-factor decided. Either disable 2FA on the receiving account before delivery day, or keep it on and give restricted sub-account access to [email protected]. Orders where neither has happened take longer than 48 to 72 hours.

Two routes. The default is that we do it: once your login is saved, the build ends with the mailboxes exported into the workspace you named, and you open Smartlead to find them connected. The second is doing it yourself from the credentials in your portal, which is the route if you would rather not store a login with us. Either way the sequence is the same, written as what you are doing rather than as button labels that will have moved by the next release.

1. 1Connect by provider. Google mailboxes through the Google path, Microsoft 365 and Azure through the Microsoft path, authorising over OAuth. No password is stored, nothing breaks when one is rotated, and the app-password route is never needed.
2. 2If you use IMAP/SMTP on Microsoft, enable SMTP AUTH first. Authenticated SMTP is off by default on recent Microsoft tenants, at the tenant and per mailbox, and it fails looking exactly like a wrong password. OAuth avoids the question.
3. 3Bulk import, one file per client. The credentials we hand over shape straight into Smartlead’s import. One file per client keeps an account from landing in the wrong workspace, which is the mistake that undoes the layout above in one upload.
4. 4Set the display name, signature and daily cap per mailbox. All three before the first send, across the whole import in one pass. The cap is the setting that decides how long the fleet lasts; the default is not tuned to these mailboxes.
5. 5Point tracking at the client’s own domain, or turn it off. A custom tracking domain per client, or no open tracking at all. We turned open tracking off fleet-wide and published the result.

For an agency the number to watch is not the cap but the creep: a client asks for a push, the cap goes to 25 for a week, and it never comes back down. Make the cap a policy in the onboarding document rather than a dial in the workspace, and size the client’s fleet for the volume they actually want with the infrastructure calculator.

Prewarmed inboxes arrive with sender history; fresh inboxes are warmed by us for 14 to 21 days before handover. Our warmup then keeps running at 30 emails per inbox per day underneath your campaigns for as long as you hold the inboxes. Smartlead’s own warmup on top of that is more mail from the same mailbox against the same daily budget, so leave it off, or count it inside the cap if you turn it on.

Smartlead’s API exposes per-mailbox and per-campaign stats, and the free dashboard in our Smartlead API article pulls them into one view across clients: bounces by domain, replies by mailbox, the account whose numbers moved this week. Pair it with Google Postmaster Tools on every domain that sends to Gmail and a weekly blacklist check, and a slipping inbox is a Monday-morning item rather than a client email.

When one does slip, pause the mailbox in Smartlead so the campaign reroutes across the rest, run the bounce analyzer on that domain’s bounces to see whether it is the list or the domain, and message us on WhatsApp at +1 904 736 2539. Replacement inboxes are part of the package when deliverability drops, and the reason to keep a few spare per client is so that a flagged mailbox is an inconvenience rather than a paused campaign.

Prewarmed inboxes include a free prewarmed .COM or .CO domain and send from the day they land: $8.00 per inbox per month on Google and Microsoft, $7.00 on a two-month commit, $6.00 quarterly. Azure is billed per tenant, $69 monthly, $60 on two months, $50 quarterly, with up to 100 inboxes on one domain, which at capacity is $0.69, $0.60 and $0.50 per inbox.

Fresh inboxes on a client’s own branded domains, warmed by us for 14 to 21 days first, run from $3.50 down to $2.00 per inbox per month on Google by order size and billing cycle, $3.00 to $2.00 on Microsoft 365, and $50 flat for an Azure tenant. A typical client launch is a prewarmed order to start sending this week and a fresh order on their brand to scale on; the infrastructure recipes price six common volumes, and every price on the site is at /price.md.

Do you load the inboxes into Smartlead for me?

Yes, by default. Smartlead is one of the four sequencers our portal and API can export a built order into directly: you save your Smartlead login once in the portal, and the mailboxes appear in the workspace you choose. You keep full admin on every mailbox either way, so you can also import them yourself from the credentials we hand over.

How should an agency split inboxes across clients in Smartlead?

One client workspace per client, and no domain shared between two workspaces. Each client gets their own domains with two or three inboxes each, so a list problem on one account can only ever burn that account’s domains. Our portal folders map one-to-one onto this: an order per client, exported into that client’s workspace.

What daily limit should each inbox have?

Fifteen a day on Google Workspace, eight on Microsoft 365, two on a full Azure tenant of 100 (four at 50 per tenant, six at 25). Set it per mailbox in Smartlead and treat it as policy; the fleets that get rebuilt every quarter are the ones where someone raised it for a push and never put it back.

Should I turn on Smartlead warmup for prewarmed inboxes?

No. Prewarmed inboxes arrive with sender history and our own warmup keeps running underneath your campaigns at 30 emails per inbox per day for as long as you hold them. A second warmup from the sequencer is more mail from the same mailbox against the same daily budget. If you enable it anyway, count it inside the inbox limit, not on top.

Is WarmInboxes a Smartlead partner?

Yes, WarmInboxes is a Smartlead Partner. That is a partnership on the infrastructure side: we sell the mailboxes and domains that run inside Smartlead, not Smartlead seats, and this page is not a review of the sequencer.

How long until the inboxes are in Smartlead?

Every order is delivered within 48 to 72 hours of payment, prewarmed and fresh alike, with SPF, DKIM, DMARC and forwarding configured first. The export into Smartlead is part of the build when you have saved your login; otherwise the credentials are in your portal the moment the order completes.