How it works
From a domain you just bought to a mailbox that sends.
Infrabox runs the same eight steps for every Google Workspace mailbox it provisions. They run in order, unattended, and each has to finish before the next begins. Nothing here needs you to log into Google, open the Admin Console, or copy a DNS record by hand.
The times below are the same typical durations the dashboard shows while a mailbox is provisioning. They are estimates, not promises — and most of the total is one step waiting on Google.
- steps
- 8
- run
- Unattended, in order
- typical total
- ~7 hours
- longest step
- Domain verification
- google logins
- None
Durations are the dashboard's own per-step estimates, not a service level.
01the pipeline
The pipeline
The eight steps.
Each bar is drawn against the longest step, so the shape of the run is visible rather than buried in a column of numbers. One step is roughly 69% of the typical total.
- 01
Workspace order
Before anything is created we check the order is actually fulfillable — the domain, the seat capacity and the billing all have to line up. Nothing external happens in this step, which is exactly why it is first: a bad order fails here, in a second, instead of halfway through a Google setup.~15 min - 02
Admin account
Your domain is attached to a Google Workspace as a secondary domain and the admin account that will own its mailboxes is created. You never see a Workspace signup form, and you never hold the admin password — the platform holds it so the remaining steps can run without you.~15 min - 03
Activation
Google has to acknowledge the new account before it can be configured. This step waits for that acknowledgement and confirms the account is active and unsuspended, rather than assuming it and failing later with a confusing error.~30 min - 04
Workspace & DNS
The records that make a domain able to send and receive mail — MX, SPF and DMARC — are written straight into DNS with the values Google expects. This is the step people most often get wrong by hand: a stray SPF include or a missing DMARC record is the difference between the inbox and the spam folder.~20 min - 05
Domain verification
Google will not let a domain send until it has proved ownership of it. We publish the verification token and then ask Google to check it, repeatedly, for hours if that is what it takes. Nameserver and DNS propagation is genuinely slow and entirely outside anyone's control, so this is the one step where waiting is normal rather than a symptom of something broken. It is also the step that dominates total setup time.~5 hr - 06
DKIM signing
DKIM is the signature that lets a receiving server prove your mail was not tampered with in transit, and it is the piece most cold-email setups skip because Google only exposes it through the Admin Console. We generate the key, publish it to DNS and turn signing on for the domain, so it is done rather than on a checklist.~30 min - 07
Sending credential
The mailbox is authorised for programmatic sending and the credential is verified by actually calling Google with it — not just issued and hoped for. There is no app password to generate, no per-mailbox secret for you to store, and no 2-step verification prompt to click through.~20 min - 08
Renewal
The mailbox is put on its renewal schedule so it does not quietly lapse mid-campaign. Bookkeeping, but the kind you notice when it is missing.~5 min
- Domain verification
- 300 min · 69%
- The other 7 steps
- 135 min · 31%
- Typical total
- 435 min
02the long pole
Worth being clear about
Domain verification sets the pace, not us.
Seven of the eight steps are quick. The fifth — proving to Google that you own the domain — depends on nameserver delegation and DNS propagation, which routinely take hours and are entirely outside our control and yours. So Infrabox treats a slow verification as a wait rather than a failure: up to 40 attempts, backing off from 60 seconds to a 15-minute ceiling, before it gives up.
That is why we quote a typical time per step rather than one headline number for the whole thing. Of the 435 typical minutes across all eight steps, 300 of them are domain verification alone. A domain whose nameservers are already pointed correctly moves fast; one bought five minutes ago waits on the internet, like everyone else.
While it waits, you can watch it. The dashboard shows which step each mailbox is on, so a mailbox that is taking a while is legible instead of mysterious.
- Retry attempts
- 40
- First backoff
- 60 sec
- Backoff ceiling
- 15 min
Read out of the site_verification step’s own retry policy. Every other step uses the shared default instead.
What this gets you
Authentication and deliverability covers what the records published in steps four to six actually do, and where we stop making claims. Pricing is two line items, and the calculator will total up your setup.
Ready to stand up sending infrastructure?
Tell us the shape of it — mailboxes, domains, and the tool you send with.