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Set Up Cold Email Inboxes in Zoho Mail

Follow these steps if you chose Zoho Mail. If you chose Google Workspace, go to Set up Google Workspace instead.

caution

Choose a Mail Lite plan (or higher). Zoho's free plan doesn't include IMAP, so you can't connect it to Instantly.

1. Create the administrator account​

Sign up for Zoho Mail using your first cold email domain and one of the email addresses you planned (for example [email protected]).

This is your administrator account. It is also one of your cold email inboxes.

The sign-up wizard helps you add your domain, create users and add DNS records. You can follow the wizard, or skip those steps and use the instructions below.

2. Add and verify your domains​

In the Zoho Mail Admin Console, go to Domains.

  1. Check your first domain is listed (for example trybluecake.com)
  2. Select Add and add each other cold email domain
  3. Zoho shows a TXT record to prove you own the domain. Add it in Cloudflare (DNS > Records), for example:
TypeNameContent
TXT@zoho-verification=zb12345678.zmverify.zoho.com
  1. Back in Zoho, select Verify TXT Record

Copy the values Zoho shows you, not the example above. Zoho uses different servers depending on your region (for example zoho.com in the US and zoho.eu in Europe).

3. Add the inboxes​

In the Admin Console, go to Users > Add.

Add each email account you planned, on every domain. For each user:

  • Untick Force user to change password on first login
  • Use a strong, unique password. I recommend a password manager such as Bitwarden, which is free.
  • Add a profile photo

4. Add DMARC report addresses​

DMARC sends daily reports about your emails to an address you choose. Add a dmarc-reports@ address for each domain as an alias of your administrator account, so all the reports arrive in one inbox.

  1. In the Admin Console, go to Users and select the super administrator (marked with a crown, for example [email protected])
  2. Select Mail accounts (or Mailbox settings) > Email alias > Add
  3. Add an alias for each domain, for example:
    • dmarc-reports@trybluecake.com
    • dmarc-reports@getbluecake.com

Emails to these addresses now arrive in [email protected]. You will use them when you set up DMARC.

Next step​

Authenticate your domains with MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC.