Email sending

Invoices, booking reminders and sign-up emails go out from your own address, so the people who receive them recognise who it is from. Connect it once to start sending.

What this is

SoftSolz only emails you and your team, about your SoftSolz account. Every email your workspace sends to your customers goes out from your own address, on your domain, with your name on it - never from SoftSolz.

Until you connect an address, those emails are not sent. Nothing else stops: bookings, form messages and payments still arrive in your dashboard as normal, and we let you know, at most once a day, when an email could not go out.

Which emails need your address

Anything going to someone outside your workspace, plus the emails Tasks sends to your own people:

• Invoicing - the invoice itself, payment reminders and receipts.
• Appointments - booking confirmations, reminders, reschedules, cancellations and waitlist offers.
• Customer Auth - the confirm-your-email and reset-your-password emails your own users receive.
• Newsletter and Blogs - the confirm-your-subscription email new subscribers receive.
• Quotes - the quote you send a customer to review and sign.
• Outreach - your email campaigns.
• Forms - the automatic reply to whoever filled in your form.
• Workflows - email steps you have set up.
• Tasks - the emails your people get when work is given to them, when a deadline is close, and when their work is approved or sent back.
• Website Builder - anything the forms, sign-ups and bookings on your published site send.
• Launchpad - the emails that invite a business you set up to claim its website and workspace.

Until you have set up an address, none of these are sent. When you send an invoice or a reminder yourself, you are asked to connect an address first. Visitors to your website see a message that sign-up is not available yet, rather than waiting for an email that will never arrive. Everything still shows in the app and in your notifications.

Tasks is the one that also emails your own people, because the work is yours rather than ours. Alerts about a new form submission keep coming from SoftSolz, because they go to your own team.

Set up your address

The Email tab has three parts: Set up to add an address, Addresses to see the ones you have verified and choose which one sends, and Templates to change the wording your customers read.

1. Open Marketplace → Email sending, on the Set up tab.
2. Pick your email provider from the list.
3. Paste the API key or login details it asks for.
4. Enter the address you want to send from, for example billing@yourcompany.com.
5. Add a sender name (what customers see) and optionally a reply-to address.
6. Click Verify and save. We check the details work before saving anything.
7. On the Addresses tab, click Send test to email yourself one and confirm it arrives looking right.

Choosing a provider

You need an account with an email provider. If you do not have one, Resend is the quickest to set up.

• Resend - simple, modern, generous free tier. Good default.
• SendGrid - widely used, good if you already have an account.
• Postmark - strong deliverability, popular for transactional email.
• SMTP - works with any mail host, including Mailgun, Zoho, Fastmail, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or your own mail server.
• Amazon SES - your own AWS account, so sending is billed to you directly.

Verifying your domain

Every provider requires you to prove you own the domain you send from, by adding some DNS records. You do this in your provider's own dashboard, not in SoftSolz.

1. In your provider, add the domain you want to send from, e.g. yourcompany.com.
2. Copy the DNS records they give you into your domain's DNS settings.
3. Wait for your provider to show the domain as verified. This is usually minutes, occasionally a few hours.
4. Come back to SoftSolz and save again.

Bought or connected your domain in Marketplace → Domains, and using Resend or SendGrid? Enter your key and send-from address, and a Set up DNS for me button appears on the form. Where SoftSolz runs the domain's DNS it adds the records for you; otherwise it shows exactly which records to add. Wait a minute, then press Verify and save.

Editing the wording

The Templates tab lists every email your customers receive. Click any one to change its subject line and wording. You can edit them before you have set up an address - they simply start going out once you have.

• Anything you have not touched uses our wording, so you only edit what you care about.
• The grey chips list the details you can drop in, like {{invoiceNumber}} or {{customerName}}. They are filled in when the email is actually sent.
• Live preview shows exactly how it will look, with your logo and colours.
• Send test emails it to you.
• Reset to default puts our wording back.
• New template creates one of your own that you can send from a workflow.

More than one address

You can verify as many addresses as you like and switch between them whenever you want. Each one is listed on the Addresses tab; the one marked Sending is the address your customers see.

• Add address opens a blank form. Nothing you already saved is carried over, so switching provider in the dropdown is safe.
• A second address on a provider you have already set up needs nothing but the address - we reuse the key already saved for that provider. Paste a key only if you want to replace it.
• Each address is still checked against your provider when you save it, because it is the domain that has to be verified, not the key.
• Use for sending switches your customer email to another address. It takes effect immediately, and only one address sends at a time.
• Send test emails you from that specific address, so you can check a new one before switching to it.
• Remove the sending address and another verified one takes over automatically.

A different address per service

Every address has a Used for setting. Leave it on All services and it covers everything. Set it to one service and only that service sends from it - everything else keeps using your all-services address.

So a company can send invoices from billing@yourcompany.com, task emails from team@yourcompany.com and booking confirmations from bookings@yourcompany.com, all on the same verified domain and the same provider key.

• The services that can have their own address are the ones that email people: Invoicing, Appointments, Customer Auth, Forms, Newsletter, Workflows, Tasks, Outreach and Launchpad.
• Each service keeps its own Sending choice, so switching the Tasks address does not touch the one everything else uses.
• Remove a service's address and that service falls back to your all-services one straight away.

This applies across all your websites and services. It is set once for the workspace, not per website. The sandbox is a separate workspace with its own list, so an address added in live does not send from the sandbox.

When it stops working

If your provider starts rejecting messages, usually because a key was rotated or a domain lapsed, we hold those emails rather than sending them from an address your customers would not recognise. You get one email telling you what broke, and the Email tab shows Needs attention with the reason your provider gave.

1. Check the API key is still valid in your provider.
2. Check the sending domain is still verified there.
3. Paste a fresh key into Marketplace → Email sending and save to re-verify.

Held messages go out once it is working again.

Test it step by step

This proves your customers' emails will go out from your own address. It needs two things from outside SoftSolz: an account with an email provider (Resend has a free tier) and a domain you can add DNS records to.

1. Check your access. Do this in your live workspace as a Super Admin or Admin, who have the Email Sending permission by default.
2. Verify your domain at the provider. In your provider's dashboard, add the domain you will send from and add its DNS records. Wait until the provider shows it as verified. See Verifying your domain.
3. Add the address. Open Marketplace → Email sending. On Set up, choose the Email provider, paste its key, fill in Send from and Sender name, leave Used for on All services, and press Verify and save. Success: the Addresses tab lists it, marked Sending, with today's date under Verified.
4. Send yourself a test. On that row press Send test. Within a minute or two the email you sign in with should get Test email from your workspace, which says Your email setup works. Check it shows your sender name and your address, not SoftSolz. Look in spam if it is missing.
5. Check the wording your customers get. Open Templates, pick one such as an invoice email, and look at Live preview: it should carry your logo and colours. Press Send test to get that exact email.
6. Try a real one. Send something to yourself through a service, for example fill in one of your forms that has an automatic reply, or send an invoice to your own email address. It should arrive from your address.

If something goes wrong