Email and SMS accounts — sending configuration

Settings → Email and SMS. The tabs are Email accounts (SMTP) and SMS accounts. You can also add an account under Integrations → Available integrations by selecting a provider in the Email or SMS group.

Accounts are not a separate entity—they are integration connections. Therefore, viewing and editing them requires the Integrations permission even though the tab is in the Notifications section (Settings access — permission pitfalls).

Connect an email account — step by step

1. Go to Settings → Email and SMS → Email accounts (SMTP).
2. Click Add account. The SMTP account setup wizard opens with three steps: Configuration, IMAP, and Test + activation.
3. In Configuration, select the Email provider. For known providers, host and port are filled in automatically.
4. Complete SMTP details: SMTP server, SMTP port, Use TLS, SMTP login, SMTP password, then Sender address and Sender name.
5. Click Next. Under IMAP connection, enable Enable IMAP and enter IMAP host, IMAP port, IMAP login, and IMAP password. Providers with their own webhooks (SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, EmailLabs) show a note that IMAP is not needed.
6. Click Next. On Test and activation, click Test SMTP and, if you enabled IMAP, Test IMAP too. Connection OK must light up.
7. Click Activate account. Until the test is green, the hint says Connection test must be green before activation.
8. Return to the list and check Connection health and Status. Health can be Healthy, Degraded, Error, or Test required.
9. Send a test: use Send test email beside the account. Confirmation: Test email sent. Check your inbox and message history.

Email configuration

The wizard guides you through three steps: Configuration (provider and outgoing server details), IMAP (incoming mail server), and Test + activation.

After creating an account, open its details. The basic section contains connection and sender details. Advanced contains incoming replies, delivery reports, limits, default-account selection, and diagnostics. Available sections depend on the provider. For standard SMTP, Gmail, Microsoft 365, and Mailtrap, also check the required IMAP setup.

An information icon beside a setting explains what it does. Open its tooltip with the pointer, keyboard, or a click. Enable or disable the account with the switch in the header; connection-test status is separate information.

After changing fields, click Save changes. If part of the save fails, a message identifies fields to correct; their entered values remain in the form. An empty password field does not remove the saved password. The system may ask you to confirm your identity again when saving.

Each account has Test connection, Send test email, Edit account, and Delete account actions. A colored marker in Connection health shows its condition.

You cannot activate an account without IMAP

This is the most common surprise:

A standard SMTP, Gmail, Microsoft 365, or Mailtrap account cannot be made active without enabled and completed incoming-mail access.

The reason is practical: without it, there is no way to detect bounces—messages rejected by recipient servers. The account would send blindly until the sender reputation is blocked (Email warnings — bounces, automatic disabling, expiring certificate).

Providers with their own bounce-reporting mechanism—SES, SendGrid, Mailgun—are exempt.

The block works at the data level, so it cannot be bypassed through the API or another screen.

SMS

There are three gateways. Configuration and testing work the same way as for email.

Before reporting “emails are not going out”

1. Is the account active?
2. Does the connection test pass?
3. Is the recipient on the exclusion list (Exclusion list — addresses we do not send to)?
4. Was the account disabled automatically after a series of bounces (Email warnings — bounces, automatic disabling, expiring certificate)?
5. What does the sending log say (Sending log — what happened to a message)?

The fourth case is more common than it seems—an account can disable itself.