Connect your business email: working together in a team inbox

How do you connect Microsoft 365 or your own mail server to stipt?

Go to Settings > Email and pick a connection method. For 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. If the connection drops later, for example after a password change, the admins get an email with a link to reconnect.

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: Open conversations shows what's assigned to you and not handled yet, Team open shows your teams' work and All open shows admins 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 Open versus Handled. Open means the conversation hasn't been handled yet; the icon in the list shows who sent something last. That way everyone sees at a glance what still needs attention.

You send with the send button below the reply box or with Cmd/Ctrl+Enter, then choose Mark handled, Keep open or Set a reminder. Mark as handled takes a conversation off your list without sending a reply, useful for emails that don't need one.

With a reminder you put a conversation on tomorrow morning or next week, say; the Reminder view shows all your reminders. Reminders 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.

For each email channel an admin uses Mail setup to add an optional intro text and a signature to outgoing replies. They support 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 from email templates and rules, you set up your own domain under Settings > Sender domain. Without a verified sender domain stipt sends no automated email: there is no generic platform address to fall back on. 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. stipt suggests a subdomain such as mail.yourdomain.com, so automated mail builds its own reputation next to your regular mailbox.

If a customer replies to such an automated email, the reply simply arrives in your connected inbox. 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 sender domain. If something is off, outgoing mail is paused to protect your sender reputation; receiving keeps working as normal. A notice shows exactly which DNS 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. In Studio, under Email activity, you see the status of every automated email: Sent, Delivered, Opened, Clicked, Bounced, Complained or Failed.