Email Setup Overview
Getting email flowing into Jelly is the most important part of setting up your team. Once it's working, everything else falls into place — your team can see incoming messages, collaborate on responses
This guide will help you understand how email works in Jelly and point you to the right setup instructions for your situation.
How Email Works in Jelly
Before diving into the setup steps, it helps to understand what we're trying to accomplish. There are two separate things you need to configure:
Receiving email
Receiving email is about getting messages into Jelly. When someone emails your team address (like [email protected]), you need that email to arrive in your Jelly inbox. This works through forwarding — you'll tell your email provider to send a copy of every incoming message to Jelly.
Your Jelly Forwarding Address
Every Jelly team gets a unique forwarding address that looks like this:
The "your-team-name" part is a unique identifier which makes sure your email is routed to your team. You can find your exact forwarding address in Jelly by clicking your profile photo and selecting Email Setup.
This forwarding address is where you'll tell your email provider to send incoming messages. Any email that arrives at this address will appear in your Jelly inbox.
A useful trick: You can also give this address directly to services that send notifications. For example, if you have a payment processor that sends alerts, or a monitoring service that emails you when something goes wrong, you can point those directly at your Jelly address. The notifications will arrive in Jelly without cluttering your regular inbox first.
Which Setup Guide Do You Need?
The setup process varies depending on where your email is hosted. We've written specific guides for the most common situations:
Gmail or Google Workspace
This is the most common setup, and in many ways the easiest. If your email address ends in @gmail.com, or if you use Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) for a custom domain like @yourcompany.com, this is your path.
With Gmail, you'll set up forwarding so incoming emails arrive in Jelly, then connect your Google account so Jelly can send replies through Gmail's servers on your behalf. The whole process takes about five minutes.
→ Gmail / Google Workspace Setup Guide
Microsoft 365 or Exchange Server
If your organisation uses Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) or runs an on-premises Exchange server, this guide is for you. This setup is a bit more involved because it typically requires an administrator to configure forwarding at the server level.
You'll also verify your domain using DNS records, which allows Jelly to send emails on your behalf through our email delivery service.
→ Microsoft 365 / Exchange Setup Guide
Other Email Providers
For other email services — Fastmail, Zoho, ProtonMail, or any provider that supports email forwarding — we have a general-purpose guide. You'll set up forwarding through your provider's settings, then verify your domain (or individual address) so you can send from Jelly.
→ Other Email Providers Setup Guide
Not Sure Which to Choose?
If you're not sure where your email is hosted, here are some clues:
Your email ends in @gmail.com → Gmail guide
You log into mail.google.com to check email → Gmail guide (even for custom domains)
You log into outlook.office.com or use the Outlook desktop app → Microsoft 365 guide
Your company has an IT department that manages email → Ask them; it's probably Microsoft 365 or Exchange
You use a service like Fastmail, Zoho, or ProtonMail → Other providers guide
You're not sure → The other providers guide works for most situations
What You'll Need
Before starting, make sure you have:
For any setup:
Admin or owner access to your Jelly team (regular team members can't configure email)
Access to your email provider's settings (you'll need to enable forwarding)
Admin access is required: If you don't have owner/admin rights for your Jelly team or access to your email provider's settings, you'll need to get those from someone who does before continuing.
For DNS verification (Microsoft 365, Exchange, and other providers):
Access to your domain's DNS settings
If you're not sure where your DNS is managed, it's usually at your domain registrar (the company you bought your domain from, like GoDaddy, Namecheap, or Google Domains) or at a service like Cloudflare if you've set that up.
For Gmail:
The username and password for the Google account you want to connect
What Happens After Setup
Once both receiving and sending are working, your team can:
See all incoming emails in a shared Jelly inbox
Claim conversations and collaborate with teammates
Reply to customers, with responses appearing to come from your team address
Add internal comments that customers never see
Use all of Jelly's organisation features like labels, rules, and saved replies
Your original email inbox will still receive copies of messages (assuming you configure forwarding to keep copies), so you have a backup and can always access your email the traditional way if needed.
Adding More Addresses Later
Many teams use multiple email addresses — support@, billing@, hello@, sales@, and so on. You can absolutely set up multiple addresses in Jelly.
We recommend starting with just one address to make sure everything works. Once you've confirmed that email is flowing correctly, you can add more addresses. If they're on the same domain you've already verified, adding them is quick and doesn't require repeating the whole setup process.
Getting Help
Setting up email can be fiddly, especially if you're not familiar with your email provider's settings or don't have experience with DNS. If you get stuck at any point, we're happy to help.
When you reach out, it helps if you can tell us:
Which email provider you're using (Gmail, Microsoft 365, etc.)
Which step you're stuck on
Any error messages you're seeing
We'll get back to you quickly and help you get everything working.
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