Connect your business email and work in a team inbox

How do you connect Gmail or Microsoft 365 to stipt?

Go to Settings, Email and pick a connection method. For Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 you sign in with your business account, which lets stipt read incoming mail and send replies on your behalf. Personal accounts such as gmail.com, outlook.com or hotmail won't work; you need an account on your own domain.

If you run your own or a self-hosted mail server, connect via IMAP/SMTP instead. Enter the server, port, username and password, then check the settings with Test connection.

Finally, give the channel a display name, which is how it appears in the inbox, and the email address customers write to. As soon as a test email arrives, the inbox opens for that channel and you're ready to go.

What is a shared mailbox and why use one?

A shared mailbox is one your whole team works in, think info@ or support@. Without a shared inbox that mail lives in one or two personal mailboxes: nobody sees what has already been answered, and things slip through during holidays or busy weeks.

In stipt every email arrives as a conversation in a list the whole team sees. Each conversation shows the full message history with the customer plus context, such as the contact and the channel it came in on. Everyone works from the same list, so nothing gets missed or answered twice.

Besides email, WhatsApp messages arrive in the same inbox; see the guide on connecting WhatsApp for how to set that up.

How do you assign emails to a colleague or team?

Open a conversation, choose Assignment and pick a person or an entire team. You can also leave it Unassigned, for example while nobody has picked it up yet.

The sidebar comes with default views that match this way of working: Personal - New shows what's assigned to you and not yet answered, Team - New shows your team's work and All - New shows everything. Admins can also build custom views filtered by status, person, team, channel or tags, and decide per view who gets to see it.

What status does a conversation have in the team inbox?

The heart of the model is New versus Replied. New means the customer's latest message hasn't been answered yet; as soon as someone sends a reply, the conversation flips to Replied. That way everyone sees at a glance what still needs attention.

When sending you choose Send, Send & close or Send & set in progress. Mark as done removes the New label without sending a reply, useful for emails that don't need one.

You can also snooze a conversation until tomorrow morning or next week, say, and you get a notification when the snooze ends. Snoozes are personal; colleagues don't see yours. A flag marks a conversation for the whole team, pinning marks it just for you.

How do you discuss a customer email internally?

An internal note is a message only your team can see and that never goes to the customer. Switch the reply box to Note, write your question or context and @mention a colleague to get their attention. Notes are clearly marked as visible to your team only, so you won't mistake them for an actual reply.

If something actually needs doing, turn the conversation into a task with Create task, complete with a status, priority and assignee. That way an agreement buried in an email thread doesn't get forgotten.

Can you connect multiple mailboxes to one inbox?

Yes. Every mailbox you connect becomes its own channel, so info@, sales@ and support@ can live side by side in the same inbox. Each channel gets a display name, so the conversation list shows which address an email came in on. Replies go out through the channel the conversation arrived on, so always from the right address.

Each email channel also has its own signature under outgoing replies. It supports variables such as first name, phone number and job title, filled in automatically per team member. With views you filter the conversation list per channel, so your sales team can see only the sales mailbox, for example.

How do you send email from your own domain?

Replies from the inbox simply go through your connected mailbox, so they already come from your own address; nothing to set up there.

For automated email, such as messages sent from email templates, stipt uses a generic sender address by default. If you want customers to see that mail coming from @yourdomain.com too, set up a sending domain under Settings. Add your domain, create the DNS records shown at your provider, such as Cloudflare or GoDaddy, and click Verify. You choose the exact sender address and sender name yourself.

See the email templates guide for how to set up those automated emails.

How do you make sure your email actually arrives?

stipt continuously checks the SPF, DKIM, DMARC and MX records of your sending domain. If something is off, outgoing mail is paused to protect your sender reputation; receiving keeps working as normal. A notice shows exactly which records to add, and Re-check confirms once everything is fixed. Each check shows a status of OK, Warning or Action needed.

Bounces are handled too. If an address doesn't exist (a hard bounce) or a complaint comes in, stipt puts that address on a block list and stops sending to it. Temporary issues, soft bounces, expire on their own. Per email you see the delivery status: Sent, Delivered, Opened, Clicked, Bounce, Complaint or Failed.

Frequently asked questions