Ha-Marketing

Setting up email, step by step

For the system to send messages on your behalf — booking confirmations, newsletters, automations triggered by a form — you need to connect your own mailbox. It is a one-time setup and takes about five minutes.

Why your own mailbox, and not ours?

If your messages left our server under your company name, the receiving mail system would treat it as forgery: the SPF check would fail and the message would land in the spam folder. It is not only that one message that gets lost — your domain's reputation suffers too, so your later messages are delivered worse.

That is why every client sends from their own mailbox. The reply button then points to the right place, and the message arrives from your own domain.

What you will need

Four details — the same ones you would type into a mail program such as Outlook or Thunderbird:

Server name (SMTP address) — for example smtp.gmail.com
Port — usually 587
Username — normally your full email address
Password — your mailbox password or an app password

Your mail provider gives you these. If you cannot find them, search their help pages for "SMTP settings".

Details for the most common providers

Google Workspace / Gmail

Server: smtp.gmail.com
Port: 587
Username: your full address
Password: you need an app password, not your normal one

Since 2022 Google no longer accepts your account password from external programs. You can create an app password in the security settings of your Google account, after turning on two-step verification.

Microsoft 365 / Outlook

Server: smtp.office365.com
Port: 587
Username: your full address
Password: your account password (with two-step verification enabled, an app password here too)

An address at your hosting provider (e.g. info@yourdomain.com)

Server: usually mail.yourdomain.com, or whatever your provider states
Port: 587 (STARTTLS) or 465 (SSL)
Username: the full email address
Password: the mailbox password

How to set it up

Sign in and open Settings → Email.
Fill in Server, Port, Username and Password.
In the Sender field write what recipients will see, in this form: My Company Ltd <info@mycompany.com>.
If your provider gave you port 465, tick the encrypted connection box. For port 587, leave it unticked.
Click Save.
Finally press Send a test message to myself. If it arrives, you are done.

If the test message does not arrive

The system does not stay silent — it tells you what happened. The most common messages:

"Wrong username or password" — with Gmail and Microsoft this is almost always because the normal password was entered instead of an app password.
"Could not connect to the server" — a mistyped server name, or the wrong port. Check your provider's help pages again.
"The connection timed out" — the port is probably closed. Try 465 instead of 587 (together with the encryption tick), or the other way round.

If the message was sent but you cannot find it, check the spam folder. If it is there, it means your domain would benefit from SPF and DKIM records — your provider or we can help with that.

What is a sender address, and when do you need one?

For campaign emails you can register separate sender addresses (Settings → Email → Sender addresses). This is useful when several people work in one account: info@ can be shared, while a personal address may only be used by its owner.

Every sender address must be verified with a confirmation email before it can be used. This is not a formality: a message sent from an unverified address would also fail the checks on the receiving side.