Forward emails to a hosted email address in the conversations inbox

If your inbox isn’t hosted with Office 365 or Google, or you’re using a Google Groups account, email alias, or shared mailbox (e.g., a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox) to communicate with contacts, set up a hosted email in the conversations inbox so you can forward emails from your mail client to the inbox.

For example, if you have a Google Groups mailing list, you can add the HubSpot hosted email in your Google Groups settings so emails sent to the Google Groups account appear in the conversations inbox. 

There are two steps to setting up a hosted email: set up the hosted email in HubSpot, then add the hosted email as a forwarding address in your email provider.

Please note: HubSpot conducts security checks for incoming emails to help prevent spam from showing up in your HubSpot hosted conversations inbox. Some emails may be rejected. If you believe legitimate emails are being rejected, contact your IT department to make sure your mail server is configured correctly.

Set up a hosted email address in HubSpot

You can customize a hosted email address in your inbox settings. 

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to CRM > Inbox.
• In the bottom left, click Inbox Settings.
• On the Channels tab, click Connect a channel.
• Click Team email. 
• Select Other mail account.
  
• On the next screen, customize how your from name and from address will appear when a contact receives an email from you:

Please note: you cannot use a from name for more than one hosted email address. The from name value must be unique to the hosted email address that you're connecting. 

• To customize the from name that displays, click the From name dropdown menu and select an option.
  • Agent and company name: select this option to display the user's name and the company name. Enter the company name in the text field.
  • Company name: select this option to display the company name only. Enter the company name in the text field.
• To customize the from address, select the radio button next to one of the options.
  • Use default: the default from address for users in a paid account will appear as [username]@[subdomain].hs-inbox.com. The default from address for free users will appear as [username]@[subdomain].hubspot.inbox.com.
  • Customize from address: in the the text field, enter the email address you want to display. If you enter an email address that isn't recognized, you will need to verify that you have access to that domain. Click connect your domain to connect and authenticate your email sending domain.

Please note: if you're a Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or Service Hub Starter, Professional, or Enterprise user, you can enter a connected email sending domain as your custom send from address. Learn how to connect an email sending domain. 

• To include a team email signature in emails you send from the inbox, click Add team signature. 
  • In the text box, customize your team email signature in the Simple editor.
    • Use the icons at the bottom to format the text, insert a link, or insert an image. 
    • To insert a personalization token that will populate with the sender's full name or first name, click the Insert Token dropdown menu and select Full name or First name. When the contact receives an email from the team email address, the name of the user who sent the email will appear in the email signature.
• On the right, preview how the from name, from address, and email signature will appear in the contact's inbox. 
• Click Next.
• By default, incoming conversations are left unassigned for your team to triage. If you want to route the conversation to specific users and team members, click to toggle the Automatically assign conversations switch on.
  • Click the Assign To dropdown menu and select a routing option:
    
    • Specific users and teams: route incoming conversations to the users or teams selected. Select the users or team names from the Specific users and teams dropdown menu.
    • Contact owner: route incoming conversations to a contact's owner. The contact must have an owner assigned to their record and be tracked with a cookie. If the owner is offline, the conversation will be emailed to the visitor's owner.
  • By default, incoming conversations will only be assigned to agents that are available. If no agents are available, the email conversation will be unassigned. You can clear the Assign to available users only checkbox to turn off assignment based on agent availability.
• By default, a ticket will be created for incoming conversations: 
  • To customize the ticket properties, click Edit ticket.
  • Edit the properties in the right panel, then click Save.
  • If you do not want to create a ticket for each incoming conversation, click to toggle the Treat incoming conversations as support tickets switch off. 

• Click Next.
• In the Copy your forwarding address field, preview your forwarding address. To edit the forwarding address, click Customize address, then in the dialog box, edit the address and click Save.

Before you can start receiving emails in the conversations inbox, add the forwarding address to your email provider's settings. 

Please note: you cannot edit the forwarding address after this step. Make any changes before you finish setting up your hosted email.

Add the forwarding address to your email provider's settings

After you set up your hosted email address in HubSpot, you need to add the hosted email as a forwarding address in your email provider's settings. 

• In HubSpot, next to the forwarding address, click Copy.
• To view instructions for how to add your forwarding address, click the Select an email provider dropdown menu. Follow the steps to add the forwarding address to your email provider's settings. 

• If your provider is not listed in the dropdown menu, view the list of additional providers below:
  • Gmail
  • Google Groups
  • Microsoft Exchange 2007
  • Microsoft Exchange 2010
  • Microsoft Exchange Online
  • Bluehost
  • cPanel
  • DreamHost
  • FatCow
  • Rackspace
  • Register.com
  • Yahoo! Business
  • OVH
  • GoDaddy
  • Apple Mail
  • iCloud

• After you add the forwarding address to your email provider's settings, navigate back to HubSpot, then in the bottom right, click Connect & finish.

Please note: the maximum email size for emails sent to hosted inboxes is 30MB. This includes any attachments in the email. 

You may get a notification that a confirmation email was sent to your hosted inbox. Navigate to the conversations inbox in your account to view the confirmation code and verify your email. When your hosted email is successfully connected, you will see it listed with your other connected team email channels. Learn how to respond to emails that are forwarded to the conversations inbox.

Please note: when an email is forwarded to a hosted email address in the conversations inbox, by default, HubSpot associates that email to the contact record with the From email address in the original email, not the forwarder's email address. This ensures that the emails are correctly associated to contacts if you're using an automated forwarding rule in your inbox. Learn how to manage your forwarding rules in the inbox.