Connecting Your Email

Connecting your mailbox does two separate jobs, and it helps to think of them separately from the start:

Sending — proposals, invoices, and messages go out from your address instead of JourneyFuse's shared one, so replies come straight back to you.
Inbox sync — mail your clients send you gets pulled into JourneyFuse and matched to the right client, lead, and trip, so the whole conversation lives on the trip instead of in your head.

Some providers cover both in one click. Gmail does not, and that catches more people than anything else on this page, so it is worth reading the Gmail section even if you have connected email somewhere before.

Everything here lives at Settings → Email.

Which connection covers what

You click	Sending	Inbox sync	What you need
Google	✅	❌	Just your Google login
Outlook	✅	✅	Just your Microsoft login
Gmail (IMAP)	✅	✅	A Google app password
Yahoo / iCloud / Zoho Mail	✅	✅	That provider's app password
Other Email Provider (IMAP)	✅	✅	Your mail password plus your server names

You can hold more than one at a time. If you do, sending goes out through them in this order: IMAP, then Outlook, then Google.

Gmail: why there are two buttons

There are two Google entries on the page and they are not alternatives, they do different things.

Google is a one-click sign-in that covers sending only. Reading a Gmail inbox through Google's API needs a restricted scope that Google grants only after an additional security review, which is not something we have completed, so we do not request it. That is a limit on Google's side rather than a setting on yours, and no amount of reconnecting the Google button will add inbox sync.

Gmail (IMAP) is the connection that brings your inbox in. It uses Gmail's standard mail protocol, which needs a 16-character app password rather than the password you sign in to Google with.

Most people want both: click Google for the easy sending connection, then click Gmail (IMAP) and do the app password once. Once Gmail is connected for sending, the card tells you exactly this, in small print under the green tick.

Getting a Gmail app password

An app password is a separate 16-character code Google generates for one specific app. Your normal Google password will not work here, and neither will a 2-step verification PIN or a code from an authenticator app.

Turn on 2-Step Verification in your Google account, if it is not on already. Google hides the app password page entirely until it is.
Go to myaccount.google.com/apppasswords.
Give it a name you will recognise later, something like "JourneyFuse", and create it.
Google shows you 16 characters in four groups of four, like abcd efgh ijkl mnop. Copy them.
Back in Settings → Email, click Gmail (IMAP), enter your address, paste the 16 characters into App password, and click Test & Connect.

Turning on 2-Step Verification is only half of it. This is the single most common place people stop. Two-step verification does not connect anything by itself, it only unlocks the page where you generate the app password. If you turned it on and went straight back to JourneyFuse, there is still one step to do.

You can paste the code with the spaces in it. We strip them for you.

If Google hides the app password page

Google will not show that page at all in a few situations, and this is much more common on Google Workspace accounts (a @youragency.com address run by Google) than on a personal @gmail.com one:

2-Step Verification is not on for your account. This is nearly always the reason.
2-Step Verification is set up with security keys only.
The account is on Google's Advanced Protection program.
Your Workspace administrator has not allowed app passwords. If that is you, allow it in the Google Admin console under Security → Authentication → 2-step verification, then turn 2-Step Verification on for your own account and come back.

Outlook and Microsoft 365

Click Outlook and sign in with Microsoft. That one connection covers both sending and inbox sync, with no app password to generate.

Use this rather than IMAP for any Microsoft-hosted mailbox. Many Microsoft 365 tenants have password-based IMAP switched off at the organisation level, so the IMAP route will simply be refused even when your password is correct.

If Microsoft turns you away, the message usually names the reason. Consent errors mean an administrator has to approve JourneyFuse for the tenant before you can connect.

Yahoo, iCloud, Zoho, and everything else

These use the same IMAP form and are prefilled with the right server names, so you only supply an address and a password.

Yahoo and iCloud both need an app-specific password, not your normal one. For iCloud, generate it at appleid.apple.com under Sign-In and Security → App-Specific Passwords.
Zoho Mail takes your normal Zoho password, but you have to switch IMAP on first, in Zoho Mail settings under Mail Accounts → IMAP.
Other Email Provider (IMAP) is for anything else, including mail hosted with your website (SiteGround, cPanel, GoDaddy and similar). You will also be asked for the incoming and outgoing server names. For most hosts these are mail.yourdomain.com on port 993 incoming and 587 outgoing. Your host's support page will confirm them.

Whatever you pick, Test & Connect verifies the credentials against your provider before saving anything, so a connection that saves is a connection that works.

Inbox Sync: choosing what comes in

Once a connection that supports inbox sync is in place, the Inbox Sync card controls how much of your mailbox JourneyFuse stores.

Smart (the default) drops newsletters and automated mail, and keeps client, lead, and inquiry mail along with supplier confirmations. This is the right setting for almost everyone.
Contacts only stores mail only to and from people already saved as a client or lead. Strict, and it means a brand-new inquiry from a stranger is missed.
All keeps everything, including marketing. Uses the most storage, but nothing is ever filtered out.
Off stops inbox sync entirely. Your mailbox stays connected for sending.

New mail appears within about 10 minutes of arriving. To bring in mail that predates the connection, use Import last 30 days on the same card. That is a one-time backfill, and your sync setting still applies to it, so newsletters are skipped on Smart.

This setting belongs to the whole agency, not to you. Inbox Sync is one choice for every advisor in the workspace, and only an owner or admin can change it. If your agency is set to Off, connecting your own mailbox will send fine and sync nothing, and there is no error to tell you so. If you are an advisor and your inbox stays empty after a successful connection, ask your owner what Inbox Sync is set to before assuming the connection failed.

How long mail is kept

Mail attached to a client, lead, or trip is kept indefinitely, as is anything classed as client, lead, or inquiry mail. General mail with no CRM connection, along with supplier bulletins, is cleared after 90 days so your inbox does not fill up with things nobody will read again.

Which address your mail goes out from

Once a mailbox is connected, everything you send routes through it, so the From address is that mailbox's address. To send from a different address, connect that mailbox instead.

Gmail and Outlook also control the sender name recipients see. If your agency's From Name is "Coastal Escapes" but your Gmail account is named "Nancy D", recipients see "Nancy D". That is the provider rewriting the header on the way out and it cannot be overridden from JourneyFuse. Change it in Gmail under Settings → Accounts and Import → Send mail as, or in your Outlook account name settings. A generic IMAP host usually honours the name JourneyFuse sets. See Sending Emails for more on composing and sending.

What you can see depends on your role

If you are part of a team, Settings → Email shows you different things depending on your role:

Owners and admins see everything: the connection card, Inbox Sync, Sending Defaults, and the agency's forwarding addresses.
Advisors see the Email Connection card only. Your mailbox connection is yours, so you set it up yourself, but the agency-wide settings are managed by your owner.

Solo advisors, with no team, see the full page.

When a connection is refused

Test & Connect reports what your provider actually said. The common ones:

What you see	What it means
Gmail needs a 16-character app password	You entered your Google password or a PIN. Generate an app password.
The App Passwords page is hidden	See If Google hides the app password page above.
Microsoft 365 rejected the password login	The tenant likely blocks IMAP passwords. Use the Outlook button instead.
Zoho rejected the login	IMAP Access is not switched on in Zoho Mail settings.
Apple rejected the login	iCloud needs an app-specific password from appleid.apple.com.
Could not find mail server "…"	The incoming server name is wrong or has a typo. For most hosts it is `mail.yourdomain.com`.
Connection refused on port …	The server name or port is wrong. Incoming is almost always `993`.
Timed out reaching …	The server did not answer. Check the server name and port, then try again.
"…rejected that email address and password", followed by your server's own words	Your host refused the credentials and told us why. That quoted sentence comes straight from your mail server.

If a message names a specific thing to fix, fix that first. Repeating the same password will not produce a different answer, because your provider decided it, not JourneyFuse.

Disconnecting

Disconnect on any connected mailbox stops sending from it, and stops inbox sync for the ones that sync. Mail already pulled in stays where it is, attached to its clients and trips. Reconnect any time.

Inbox & Messaging — working with mail once it is flowing in
Sending Emails — composing and sending from JourneyFuse
Email Signatures — what gets appended to your outgoing mail