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Connect your email: Gmail, Outlook or your own server

The three ways to connect a mailbox, and the two options worth deciding as you connect it.

Channels

Email is connected from Connections → Channels, with Connect mailbox on the Email card. There are three paths, and the first one you pick decides what it asks you for.

Gmail and Microsoft: one click

  1. Click Connect mailbox.
  2. Choose Gmail or Microsoft (the latter covers Outlook, Office 365 and Hotmail).
  3. The provider’s window opens. Sign in and authorize access.
  4. You come back to meruma with the mailbox connected.

There are no passwords to copy: the authorization renews itself as long as you do not revoke it from your Google or Microsoft account.

Any other mailbox: IMAP + SMTP

If your email is on your own domain or another provider, choose IMAP + SMTP. That needs the technical details, which whoever administers your email can give you:

  • Mailbox address, the one that will show as the sender.
  • IMAP server (receiving): host, port, user and password.
  • SMTP server (sending): host, port, user and password.
  • Implicit TLS, recommended and on by default.

Click Test and connect: meruma tests both connections before saving anything, so if a detail is wrong you find out right then and not three days later.

If your provider uses two-step verification — Gmail or Microsoft over IMAP, for instance — your account password will not work: you need to generate an app password at the provider.

The two options worth deciding

As you connect, the screen offers two checkboxes:

  • Receive emails in the chat. Emails land in the same inbox as WhatsApp and Instagram. It is what almost everyone wants.
  • Create new contacts for unknown emails. Think twice before turning this on for a mailbox that receives a lot of automated mail: every newsletter and notification would create a contact. For a sales or support mailbox it makes sense; for info@, rarely.

Both can be changed later.

Before sending campaigns

Receiving and replying is one thing; sending bulk email is another. For that you need SPF, DKIM and DMARC records set up on your domain, or Gmail and Outlook will send your campaigns to spam. It has been their requirement since 2024 for anyone sending more than five thousand emails a day, and enforcement has tightened since.

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