StepsSend email and email senders

Send email and email senders

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Send emails from a workflow through your own SMTP sender: set up a sender, write the email with Liquid, add attachments, and know the sending limits.

The Send email step sends an email to a customer, your team or anyone else. Emails always go out through your own sender, so they come from your address and your mail service. There is no shared mail relay for workflow emails.

Set up a sender

The Add SMTP server form: Mail server with Host, Port 587 and Encryption STARTTLS, Username and Password, then Sender with From address, From name, Reply-To and Name in this app
The SMTP form. The login is checked against the server before the sender is saved.
The Email senders page: Add your first sender with SMTP server (Add SMTP server), Google and Microsoft 365 marked as not available yet, and the Sending limit card with 0 of 5,000 recipients today
The Email senders page before the first sender is added.
  1. Open Email senders in the app menu.
  2. Under Add your first sender, select Add SMTP server.
  3. Under Mail server, enter Host, Port and Encryption: STARTTLS (port 587), SSL / TLS (port 465) or None.
  4. Enter Username and Password. The password is stored encrypted. Many providers want an app password here, not your sign-in password. Leave the username empty for a relay that needs no login.
  5. Under Sender, enter the From address. Your mail server must allow this login to send from it. From name, Reply-To and Name in this app are optional.
  6. Save. Then open the sender and use Send test email to check it.

The first sender becomes the default sender. Every Send email step that does not choose one uses it.

The host must be a public mail server. Addresses inside private networks are refused.

Add the step

  1. Press + and pick Send email.
  2. Send from: Default sender or one of your senders.
  3. To: one address or several, separated by commas, 20 at most. For the buyer of an order:
{{ event.payload.email }}
  1. Subject and Format: HTML or Plain text.
  2. Write the Email. Liquid works here: if, for, filters, your variables and secrets.
  3. Optional: Cc, Bcc and Reply to. Empty Reply to means the sender's own reply-to address.
Hi {{ event.payload.customer.first_name | default: "there" }},

thank you for your order {{ event.payload.name }}:

{% for line in event.payload.line_items %}{{ line.quantity }} x {{ line.title }}
{% endfor %}
The Send email side panel of the workflow Daily low stock report by email: a warning No email sender yet with a Set up a sender link, and the To field set to a variable
The Send email step. Until a sender exists the step warns you and links to the Email senders page.

Attachments

Select Add attachment, up to 5 per email. Each attachment is one of:

  • Link - an https link, fetched when the email is sent: PDF, images, CSV, text or calendar files.
  • File from Files - the file key of a file in Files, stored by a Files, Download file or File transfer step. Pick that step's key from the variables, or type it.

File name is optional: empty means the name from the link, or the last part of the file key. All attachments of one email together can be 10 MB at most.

See Files, SFTP and downloads and Recipe: email a daily file from SFTP.

Sending limits

The limit protects your sender and ours from a runaway workflow or a stolen key. It counts recipients, per hour and per day (UTC), test emails included. It is not a billing unit.

Plan Recipients per day
Free 50
Starter 500
Grow 5,000
Unlimited 50,000

The hourly limit is a fifth of the daily one, and at least 20. The Email senders page shows the limit and what you have used under Sending limit, and the last emails under Recent sends. When the limit is reached the step fails; it is not retried.

Your mail service has its own limits too. They apply first if they are lower.

What happens when it runs

  • In a preview no email is sent. The step checks the addresses, names the sender it would use and checks the limit.
  • If the mail server cannot be reached or asks to try again later, the step is tried again automatically. A refused address or a wrong login is not retried. See Automatic retries.
  • Later steps can read messageId, recipientCount, from and provider from the step's result.
  • The send log keeps the number of recipients, never their addresses.

You are the sender

Emails to customers are your emails. Whether you may send a message, and whether it needs marketing consent, depends on where you sell. The abandoned checkout templates only write to buyers who accept marketing, for that reason.